Groves gave their name to many towns. The town of Hazaribagh (the garden of a thousand trees) in Bihar, got its name from a massive mango grove with thousands of trees. The grove was so large that it is said to have provided a camping ground for troops travelling between Kolkata and Varanasi. Similarly, the city of Ambala near Chandigarh derives its name from Ambwala (land of mangoes), in tribute to its numerous mango groves. The names of localities in many cities also give us an indication of the groves that once stood there. In Chennai, we have Pelathope (jackfruit orchard), Mambalam (mango fruit), Vepery (neem), Teynampet (coconut), Panayur (palm village), Alandur (banyan), and Illuppaithoppu (mahua orchard), for instance. In Bengaluru, we have Halasur (jackfruit orchard) and Gundathope (gunda thope being the local name for a wooded grove). Mumbai too was covered with groves of different species. Phanaswadi derives its name from a jackfruit orchard that once flourished there, Vadala from a banyan grove and Madmala or Manmala (today’s crowded Mahim), from the orchard of coconuts. Do we even know how many localities in the towns and cities we live in today are named after such groves?
Groves were built and maintained by local residents, who received tax relief. William Sleeman, a British officer, in his memoir Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, wrote about groves in Jabalpore (now Jabalpur) in 1828. He said that land was provided rent-free to locals on the condition that the person would plant and care for twenty-five trees per acre. They were meant for more than providing fruit, however. The owner was also expected to build and maintain a well to water the trees, and to provide drinking water to travellers. The same officer describes a fascinating story of a Hindu couple, Berjore Sing and his wife (sadly unnamed), who owned a mango grove. According to local custom, they could not taste the fruit from the grove unless they married one of the trees, or the grove itself, to a nearby tree (normally a tamarind). The poor couple spent so much on planting and maintaining their grove and wells that they could not conduct the wedding for years, since they never had enough money. But fearing that they would die without tasting the mangoes from their orchard, which their children had eaten and spoke highly of, Sing and his wife sold their gold and silver ornaments, even borrowing money to hold the marriage. Around 150 Brahmin guests were invited to the feast. In the meantime, the only tamarind in their grove had died. Sing married the tree to a jasmine vine he had planted next to the mango tree that had been chosen as the bridegroom for the occasion. In the next fruiting season, in June 1834, Sing and his wife tasted the fruit from their trees, satisfied at last, happy that they were able to do so before they left this world. This touching story gives us a glimpse into how deeply these groves were interwoven into the lives of their owners, being much more than mere sources of income.
One of India’s earliest naturalists E.H. Aitken, writing about mango groves, asks, ‘Where would the dusty wayfarer stop to eat his midday chuppattee [flat bread made of wheat flour] and drink a draught of cold water, or where would the collector pitch his tent?’
In Mysuru, Hyder Ali is believed to have encouraged the development of gunda thopes across the region. This practice was continued by the Mysore government during the colonial period. The Mysore Gazetteer counts 2118 gunda thopes in 1894, spread across Bengaluru (then Bangalore) district, containing mango, jamun, mahua, jackfruit, tamarind and different species of ficus. Travelling along the periphery of the city, the remnants of these groves can be seen even today. Wood from trees in the groves (preferably from mango trees) was used for construction or renovation of temples, and for building doors and windows of homes. The poor, who had no land or trees of their own, were permitted to cut branches to use during weddings and cremations. Community meetings and festival feasts were held under the shade of the trees. Fruits of the mango and tamarind were shared among the families and auctioned to fund village development. Cows, goats and sheep were brought to the thopes to escape the heat of the midday sun, after being washed and given water in lakes nearby. While the grazers dozed or meditatively stared into space, the animals nibbled on the undergrowth protected by the shade of the trees.
The thopes also offered temporary residence to nomadic communities, wandering mendicants and astrologers. The trees themselves were once believed to be the abode of gods and climbing them was forbidden. Some thopes had small shrines and stones at the base of trees, dedicated to local deities. In some of the remnant groves, grazing still persists and time seems to stand still, except when the honk of a passing vehicle brings us back to the present. But even today at dusk, the sound of vehicles is drowned by the cacophony of birds that come to the thopes to roost for the night, amidst the fruit bats that can be seen flitting around the trees.
Groves around towns in north India, situated along the banks of the Ganga, had other uses. They provided cover for Indian sepoys and British troops during the famous 1857 revolts against colonial rule. We can get a glimpse of the beauty of these groves that seem to have dotted the landscape from the memoirs of James Forbes who came to India as a writer for the East India Company and spent nearly two decades here. Forbes travelled extensively, especially in northern India, and mentioned the many groves he saw in Oriental Memoirs, published in 1834. Describing the province of Gujarat, he said that ‘the number of trees which adorn the roads, the richness of the mango topes around the villages, the size and verdure of the tamarind trees, clothe the country with uncommon beauty, such indeed as I never saw to so great an extent in any other part of the globe’.
Where are these urban groves and orchards that once covered hundreds of acres? They have been lost over the years as cities grew. We can still find some remnants in some cities, but these are increasingly in danger of being lost, cut down to make way for roads and buildings. Few of Bengaluru’s groves exist today. Many have been degraded, with hardly any trees, while others have been turned into dumping sites, or converted to schools, roads, bus stops, community centres or houses. Some have been converted into parks, landscaped and beautified so much so that the original grove is unrecognizable. The trails where once cattle trod have been replaced by paved paths. What is saddest is the fading of the groves from the collective memory of the community. A once-vibrant urban ecosystem central to daily living is being reduced to an overgrown patch of land devoid of trees. As the city expands, more and more of these gunda thopes will be lost. But can knowing about the existence of these groves, and similar patches in other cities be the first step towards protecting them?
Another wilderness, located at the edge of the capital city of New Delhi, holds out hope, continuing to hang on (by a narrow thread of safety) amidst the increasing pressures of urbanization. Mangarbani is a sacred grove situated close to Gurugram, the satellite city of New Delhi, in the state of Haryana. A relatively undisturbed forest, Mangarbani has a shrine dedicated to Gudariya Baba, a hermit revered by the local villages. According to the communities living around this grove, grazing livestock and cutting wood in the grove could incur the wrath of the baba, resulting in the death of livestock or wooden beams in houses catching fire. This belief has ensured that the grove stayed protected over the years.
The land around the grove was categorized as shamilat-deh (local commons), on which the landless poor depend for wood for cooking and fodder for animals. The relentless growth of real estate around the National Capital Region (NCR) now threatens the future of this heritage grove. Many local residents have come together to protect the grove, supported by activist groups from Delhi.
Mangarbani forms a part of the Aravalli range. Its trees show us what these ancient hills once looked like. Unlike the Delhi Ridge, whose forests have been overrun by the exotic invasive mesquite, Mangarbani continues to be covered with native species. Even today, the grove is a valley of green with many species of native trees bursting into colour with the blossoming of the red palash and the striking yellow amaltas in the spring.
Meanwhile, other cities across the world have found a way to coexist with their groves. Just thirty minutes from the frenzied
chaos of Kyoto is the Sagano bamboo forest, a spectacular natural grove that regularly makes it to travellers’ bucket lists. It is a tourist attraction that draws visitors from across the world. A few kilometres from Ghana’s capital city, Accra, is the Guako sacred grove, where the blacksmith god Nii Gua is worshipped. Accra is the most densely populated of Ghana’s cities. Despite the pressure of urban growth, the Greater Accra development plan identifies and aims to protect the sacred grove, and environmental organizations such as Friends of Earth run programmes aimed at educating the public about its significance.
The term ‘urbanization’ conjures up images of the relentless expansion of cities, progressively sprawling into the surroundings. What is lost in this process, and then quickly forgotten, are the majestic gunda thopes of Bengaluru and heritage groves such as Mangarbani. Gone with the trees is the ethic that motivated these groves. Planting trees was considered a charitable act, something that conferred religious merit. Caring for these groves was a collective responsibility. Mangarbani is not just a piece of real estate but a sacred grove that is also a refuge for all forms of biodiversity. Gunda thopes once met the livelihood, social and cultural needs of local communities.
How many similar wooded groves existed across cities in India? We will probably never know. A narrative from Lucknow makes us pause. The name sakhya (derived from the word saakhi or witness), says the district gazetteer of 1904, was used to refer to solitary mango trees, the only witnesses to locations where flourishing groves once stood, a fellowship of trees maintained by the collective action of local communities. What a loss it would be, not just to our ecologies but also our social lives, if all that was left to remind us of these wooded groves once flourishing around our cities were such solitary witnesses.
SIXTEEN
NEEM:
THE BITTER
TREE OF WELLNESS
It is hard to imagine life in India without the neem. Our grandparents brushed their teeth with neem twigs—many of them retained their teeth and lived until their nineties. We place dried neem leaves under the newspaper lining in our cupboards to protect woollens from an insect attack. Also, we use neem paste as part of home remedies—from face packs for teenage acne to tea for senior citizens suffering from diabetes, and gargles for sore throats.
The neem has been around for a long time. Harappan pottery from Mohenjo-daro depicts the neem tree, with a stick-like figure sitting on its branches. One hand is stretched towards a tiger that looks at the figure over its shoulder. Sometimes, the tiger wears a pair of zebu (Indian cattle) horns. Some historians think the tree may have been a part of Harappan shamanic rituals. Neem also had more prosaic uses. Wood charcoal remains from various Harappan settlements show us that the inhabitants burnt neem wood. Pottery jars with neem and other medicinal leaves suggest that they were used to prepare medicines.
The famous Arthashastra, from the second-third centuries CE, tells us about commercial neem oil extraction. In some detail, the book tells you that the amount of oil you can extract from neem seeds will be one-fifth of the quantity of the seeds you provide. The popular name, neem or nim is derived from the Sanskrit word nimba (to bestow health). It has several other names too given its usefulness—village pharmacy, healing tree, divine tree, nature’s drugstore and kalpavriksh of Kalyuga (the wish-fulfilling tree in the age of Kali). Many Sanskrit medical texts refer to it as sarva roga nivarini (the tree that cures all illnesses). The scientific name of neem, Azadirachta indica, however comes from another source. It is derived from the Farsi word azadarakhat. While the exact meaning is contested, most people say the name is derived from Azad-darakhat-e Hind (free tree of India). There are some though who say the name comes from aza darakhat (bitter tree).
The flowers are not as bitter, giving out a very delicate fragrance that perfumes the area in which the tree is planted, attracting a number of bees, butterflies and even bats. In Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, you cannot celebrate the new year without neem flowers. The flowers are carefully separated from the stems and used to make the ugadi (new year) pachadi (chutney). The dish combines a variety of flavours—sweet, sour, salty, bitter and spicy (using chilly). The different flavours symbolize what life might have to offer in the year ahead and remind us to make the best of the different flavours the year holds. We can understand just how important the neem flower is from the experience of the coastal city of Visakhapatnam, after Cyclone Hudhud in 2014. The cyclone destroyed many trees across the city. The next year’s ugadi pachadi was affected because of the scarcity of neem flowers, which once grew abundantly in the city and could be bought cheaply from the local vegetable vendor. This news made its way to headlines in the local newspapers: ‘Hudhud has its impact on ugadi pachadi’.
Other cuisines also value the neem. In Bengal, at the start of spring, when the new reddish-brown, tender leaves of the neem emerge, they are plucked and used to make neem bhaja (roast vegetable). Eggplants are roasted in oil, tender neem leaves are fried to a crisp and added to this signature Bengali dish. It is one of those dishes you either hate or love. It is eaten because it cleanses your stomach, protects you from colds when the weather changes and stimulates your appetite.
The magic properties of this amazing tree are not just valued at home but also commercially. It has, in fact, led to heated international patent battles. In 1995, the European Patent Office granted a patent to the United States Department of Agriculture and a large American company that had developed an extract of neem oil, which they called Neemix, to combat fungal growth. Scathing criticisms poured in from India and outside. Many saw this as a new kind of colonialism where knowledge from developing countries, such as India, was stolen by the West. Others said that patenting neem was morally wrong as it was a plant considered sacred in India. Such companies made millions of dollars from patents that were never shared with the countries or communities from where the tree was originally taken.
Farmers in India have used neem oil for centuries for precisely the same purpose, but they lacked a paper trail, such as publications in peer-reviewed journals, that could prove this use. Despite centuries of traditional knowledge about the neem, India was in danger of losing intellectual property rights to its use. A global coalition—Free the Free Tree—came together for this purpose. It included Indian environmentalists and scientists, as well as international groups, who battled the patent for ten years. In neighbouring Bangladesh, where farmers also use the neem, a massive demonstration was held against the patent. Close to half a million people attended this protest. The coalition finally won the case in 2005 and the neem patent was cancelled. Though other US patents on neem are still around, this victory helped establish a precedent that traditional knowledge belongs to the place and people who have used it for centuries.
The neem is found across Indian cities. Begur, one of the older settlements of Bengaluru, is said to derive its name from Veppuru (vepa being neem tree in Tamil and Telugu). Margosa Road in Bengaluru is named after the neem trees that were planted there. In Hyderabad, a neem tree in Sri Ujjaini Mahakali temple is dated back to 1813. Suriti Appaiah, a doli-bearer (who carried stretchers in the medical unit of the army) from Hyderabad was posted in the city of Ujjain. On hearing of the cholera epidemic in Hyderabad, Appaiah and his associates prayed at the Mahakali temple in Ujjain, promising to install an idol of the goddess in Hyderabad if the epidemic was controlled. When he returned to Hyderabad in 1815, Appaiah kept his promise installing a wooden idol of Mahakali and is said to have also planted the neem tree.
The tree still stands in the temple today. No one is allowed to pluck the leaves, only the priests use them during festivals. During the annual Bonalu festivities, women carry pots filled with rice, turmeric, jaggery and curd, decorated with neem leaves, as an offering to Mahakali to seek protection in warding off diseases. Neem is believed to be the abode of Shitala, the goddess of smallpox, to whom offerings are made to keep away chickenpox, smallpox and other skin diseases. When children get ch
ickenpox, they are bathed in water in which neem leaves are immersed. The rashes on their skin are soothed with neem leaves. In south India, especially in Tamil Nadu, the goddess of smallpox is called Mariamman. Neem flowers and leaves are an essential part of the Mariamman temple festivals each year in villages and towns across south India. The neem is also often ‘married’ to the peepul tree in a symbolic ceremony for fertility and auspiciousness.
The British found it to be a tree both beautiful and useful. A British visitor to India, Anne Katherine Elwood, wrote in the 1820s, ‘The neem is most peculiarly light and elegant in its appearance, somewhat resembling a young acacia or mountain ash, whilst its cluster of flowers are not dissimilar to those of the lilac, and are delightfully fragrant.’ The British planted it widely across India in the 1880s. But as the British foresters were known to do, they were obsessed with figuring out the best way to germinate the seeds.
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