Dances with the leaves

Notes from under the peepal

 

An edited version of the piece finds places in The Sunday Magazine. Thanks are due to the team at The Hindu.

Acknowledge Dharmendra Khandal and Shakti Kumar for suggestions on the draft.

“पीपर पात सरिस मनु डोला”, is what Tulsidas wrote in the Ramcharitmanas about their poetic movement, said a friend, as I stared at the Peepal leaves. I sat, silent and smitten, amazed yet again, at this swaying of Peepal leaves. The poet, in the epic’s Ayodhya Khand, had allured to a wavering mind, the friend added.

  

From distance these swaying leaves appear like happy children playing while a closer view makes me wonder if this is how wind chimes at the Pearly Gates look like! They, when caressed by the wind, indeed play a joyous note. It is a special feel to rest my back against its trunk and look at the sky - netted by its dangling leaves. With the Peepal it is more of sitting with the tree rather than sitting under the tree.  Intrigued by the beauty and mystery of the Asvattha or the Bodhivriksha, – as it is also known, and egged on by the friend’s comment, I looked up more.

 

Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli write in their book Cities and Canopies, ‘The sound is like the pattering of raindrops, as the wavy leaves brush against each other’. They further add, ‘The same tree in the dry season, stripped of all its leaves, looks equally majestic’. While Sriram Aravamundan states, ‘The leaves appear to sway and shimmy even in the stillest of weather, when not a leaf on any other tree stirs’.

 

Some of the writings though reduced the grandeur of the species with their narrow focus on its usage and benefits. They left me perplexed.

 

This particular Peepal tree, I visit regularly, is also friends with a Neem tree - a dozen and a few feet away. Their branches meet up in the air. They remind me of how the younger me often wished to meet friends.  Some of the Peepal’s branches, strong and gentle, have grown the other direction as well - towards the river. Does it seek a better view of the flowing water? I also wondered what it thinks of or speaks to the freshly planted saplings along the river! On its branches I have, on multiple occasions, spotted civets scampering. Of course, the barbets always seem to be around. The towering tree with a magnificent trunk has a soothing presence. Perhaps, this is why men and women, wiser, have planted Peepal at temples and other places of worship and peace.

 

Not all Peepal trees boast of a grand and stately demanour though. There are some that sprout on the rooftops! A friend, who loves trees more than I, had once asked whether the Peepal has an innate sense which enable them to figure out that people have vacated the building. For, she had added, it then takes over the building silently. Renu Singhal notes, ‘One of the most unlikeliest of places where I spotted a peepal sprout was in the rusted bodywork of a passing bus. . , waving triumphantly green beside a window..’

 

This adoration for Peepal is anything but recent. Mike Shanahan, the author of Ladders to Heaven writes, ‘Buddhists, Hindus and Jains have revered this species for more than two millennia. The same tree featured in battle hymns sung by the Vedic people 3,500 years ago. And, 1,500 years earlier, it appeared in the myths and art of the Indus Valley Civilisation’. Two of its other names also highlight its religious association, Sacred Fig and Ficus religiosa.

Connecting the past and the present is one of the better known Peepal trees - the Peepal at the Mabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya. Recent reports bring out that the Covid induced lockdown has been beneficial for the tree. It is telling on the times that the closure of the temple for the people has led to improvement of the tree’s health. Sarnath, another place associated with Buddha, also has a Peepal that is revered. Here too efforts have been taken up during recent years to save the tree.

 

On many days I have seen leaves of different ages grace the space beneath the Peepal tree. One morning, when I visited it after gap of few weeks, I saw the figs scattered. ‘Ripe figs are devoured by birds and are a favourite food of migrating rosy starlings’, writes Pradip Krishen in his Jungle Trees of Central India. Ben Crair eloquently describes figs as, ‘enclosed flowers that bloom modestly inward, unlike the flamboyant showoffs on other plants’. He adds, ‘Because a fig is actually a ball of flowers, it requires pollination to reproduce, but, because the flowers are sealed, not just any bug can crawl inside. That task belongs to a minuscule insect known as the fig wasp, whose life cycle is intertwined with the fig’s’. An agaonid wasp, Blastophaga quadriceps, plays this role for the Peepal.

 

I look forward to more time with Peepal trees and getting to know them better. There has to be much, much more to them. Even Krishna,  in Bhagwad Gita, referred to himself as the Peepal amongst trees, अश्वत्थः सर्ववृक्षाणां .

 

Let us end with these lines by Ashok Vajpeyi from Kahin Nahin Wahin . . .

 

. . . धीरे धीरे हम भी बैठैंगे

शाम को पीपल के चबूतरे पर

हम भी करेंगे आते जाते नमस्कार . . .

 
Few other pieces from The Hindu Sunday Magazine

 

Malaiyo (A sweet for the mornings)

Laat Bhairav (Banaras)

Kangra Railway

Bridge over the Ganga (Banaras)