Witness to a Felling

ONGDEN LEPCHA
A ten-year-old child standing by the window, asks his mother. “What are those people doing on the slope?”
“I think they have come to cut a tree,” replies the mother.
Minutes later, the child asks again, “Why is one of them climbing with a rope tied on his back?”
By now, the man has climbed a few metres below the top of the slope. He slowly unties the rope and wraps it around a tree. In the meantime, the child pushes his mother aside at the window to get a clearer view.
An old man, cockeyed, with a round bluish cap on his head, whistle hanging from his neck, lights a few sticks of incense. He makes a round of the tree before placing the incense sticks on the ground.  A boy standing nearby, hands a glistening axe to the old man. The man tries his hand first by striking on the base of the standing tree. The first few hits disperse the butterflies and insects on the tree.  The ants are in nervous scramble as their nest gets disturbed. Sweat streams down the old man’s wrinkled face and he passes the axe to the boy. The boy strikes at the tree for a few minutes and shifts the axe to his other hand.
Now, the tree is half cut.
The old man directs his companion standing few metres away to pull the rope. The child watches them eagerly, without blinking. The striking continues...
The old man blows his whistle for the first time, passer-bys turn and look. The residents of the vicinity look towards the tree for a last time, the tree which stood for years. The National Highway comes to a standstill. Again the old man gives instructions to strike and pull simultaneously.
The tree sways.
Finally, the tree cannot bear the strikes, profusely bleeding it slowly leans and falls to the ground with a loud bang scattering leaves, twigs and branches in every direction.
In two days, the child counts upto twelve tree stumps.
The child tells his mother, “It’s looking like a playground”.
Weeks later, the child’s father returns home from the frontier. Early next morning, he takes a round of the kitchen garden. He is sipping a cup of hot Temi tea when the slope catches his eye. Noticing that not a single tree stands there, he’s dumbstruck.
Later in the evening, sitting beside a fire hearth he narrates to his family members.
“We grew up together and were separated only by a permanent black line. They (trees) randomly grew up on that damp slope without moving an inch despite the scorching sun, bone biting chill, its stomata blocked by carbonmonoxide.  They grew from seeds dispersed by birds and the wind. Not from somebody’s green finger or any other mission. This patch of small wood was full of life. I like being in the midst of nature, in green places where there is a lot of fresh air to breath. It never once crossed my mind that this slope could turn bald like an old man’s scalp. What has befallen the nests of the owl and the squirrel- predator and prey breathing next to each other? What has happened to the single Orchid species, a vertical movement which bloomed for the first time a year back on the uttis tree?  Now it takes donkeys years to see a mature tree or small wood on this slope. Each tree on this slope had a specific story and emotional bond attached to me”.
He paused for a moment and added, “Two adult malata trees were on the edge of the road.  Their spreading canopy almost overlapping each other, just like a teenage couple walking arm in arm.  The female tree used to produce small greenish fruit seen hooked only by house pigeon. Once seen feeding by a single rare visitor-green pigeon. The canopy of a male tree annually gets enshrouded by foliage of one woody climber.It bloomed for the first time last year, in the first week of May. Large, numerous, white fringed flower blooms in pitch dark and drops to the ground before morning sunlight hits the tree. It was a male indreni, Trichosanthes tricuspidata”.
“When paiyoo blooms it signifies the approaching chill of winter in the eastern Himalayas. One single paiyoo had been blooming annually for the past seven years or so. This paiyoo used to bloom in clusters, light-pink, the size of our vanishing mandarin, coming out in every branchlet, not encountered elsewhere. When in bloom it was a sight to watch the horde of birds hooked to its nectar, followed by a pair of squirrels when the fruits ripened. This tree, looking so vibrant and alive some years ago is also no more. A heart wrenching sadness surrounds me. But the scene is vivid and fresh as ever”.