My Favourite Tree was cut down!

Oh! How I loved my Tree!

It was about 11 years back in 1997 that I planted it with own hands. I was running a pretty successful Computer Training Institute in Coimbatore (India) called A-SQUARE Computer Systems. I bought a small plot of land and decided to build a house of my own. One of the very first things that we did after the house was completed was to plant this tree. It was our favourite. And how we loved it!

My (Late) Mom loved it with all her heart and took so much care for it. We saw this sapling grow from strength to strength. As it grew, it started to attract all kinds of birds. And in 2008, it was one of the biggest trees in our locality. I used to feel sad even when we were forced to trim some of the branches (due to interference with electrical cables etc).


Imagine how devastated I was when the authorities informed me that they have to bring down the tree as they were laying a metal road. It made us all sad. The Tree was with me through my bachelorhood, saw me getting married, saw my Mom pass away and shared my joy when I became a father. It was with me when I had been on a waiting list for years to get a phone connection, to the advent of pagers and cellular phones. From days when i had to walk to the Indian Telecom office every now and then to check the waiting list and try to 'pull some strings' for a simple land-line connection, to days when we had guys trying to push us a mobile almost every day. The Tree saw me go abroad for assignments and comeback to take care of it.

All my efforts to talk some sense into the authorities were in vain. I could not save The Tree.

It was a May Flower tree and it grew so fast! The Tree was host to a variety of birds of the neighbourhood. We had the most dominant guys - Crows waiting for my wife to feed them lunch, The elusive Indian Crow Pheasant or Coucal (Centropus Sinensis) (Semboothu - Tamil), the ever-cheeky Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea, Koel - Tamil). And we had the omni-present Indian Mynah. These guys were regulars visiting The Tree all year round. We could also see seasonal visitors. Some wild sparrows and others. And the occasional Eagle and even Peacock! You could see pigeons waiting in the sidelines for their share of feed thrown on my balcony and groups of Parrots (Pacchai Kili - Tamil) flying by.

And I should mention my faourite Tailorbird families! They lived on the lower branches and can be seen resting at night on the lowest brach near my Kennel! Not sure if my Doggie Brownie stands watch for them! They seem to get along so well.

There was one sad development in these 11 years. The Tree lost its very early residents/visitors - the house sparrow! The house sparrow which was so abundant that we always took it for granted, has totally disappeared from the neighbourhood. Some relate it to the advent of Cellular phones and other 'waves'. God knows what! All that we realise is that my son is growing up without seeing house sparrows, which we all grew up with. I remember when we were kids all we had to do was sprinkle some rice and millets and scores of sparrows would converge on them immediately. We used to have fun trying to trap them with a stick and basket. (I never succeeded in that!) My son sure loses on all these. (But he might prefer a cell phone to a sparrow?)

And They all lost their house in one fell swoop! If only the authorities were a bit more environment conscious.

It was one of my saddest days! I wanted a final picture of The Tree. So I got out early and took a picture of it.

It was so sad to see The Tree go down. It was like torturing the guy. Cut here cut there, then there was an altercation between the guys who were up cutting and the guys below. The guys on the tree who were manually cutting the branches protruding into the house protested and stopped work. Another batch went and took over... Then they used to JCB to break the trunk, in vain. So the JCB guy pushed and puffed and finally after about 3 hours, they took it down.

Along with it went the habitat for all those lovely chirpy friends.

And to top it all off, the contractor passed a comment which would never forget. "This Tree is useless. My guys don't even want to use it for firewood as they say it will only smoke and will not burn well. If only this was a Neem or so it would have been useful...". With one comment he broke my heart.