Felling of The Banyan Tree- Dilip Chitre

           Dilip Chitre (1938) was born in Baroda. He writes poetry both in Marathi and English. Travelling in a Cage, from which the poem selected here has been taken, was established in 1980. Apart from poetry, Chitre has also written short stories and critical essays. An Anthology of Marathi poetry from 1945-1965 is one of his most important works of translation. He sees poetry as an expression of the spirit. He lives and works in Mumbai.

          In this poem, the poet speaks about how huge banyan tree has been uprooted. This poem is written on the basis of his child wood memory. It is an hilly area and the poet and his family planned to shift to Bombay. So before they leave they want to empty their land by cutting all the trees.

        In the beginning of the poem, poet’s father asks all the tenants to leave who were staying around their surrounding, everybody left only their house and trees were remaining. In the very beginning of the poem itself the reader feels in the following lines: “My father told tenants to leave / Who lived on the houses surrounding our house on the hill”(1-2), that the poet’s family lose their neighbours for the sake of cutting trees.

            At this point the poet remembers his grandmother saying trees are holy and cutting them is crime. The trees were voiced by grandmother but still all the trees were cut including the sheoga, the oudumber, and the neem except one. The huge banyan tree was so strong that nobody could move it. Its roots were so deep but still his father ordered to remove it. According to the reader, the article “The” is used in front of each tree, so he feels that the trees are not one in number. They were more in number. It may be in hundreds or thousands. From this the reader could understand that a great Massacre has happened by cutting so many trees. “But the huge banyan tree stood like a problem / Whose roots were deeper than all our live.” In these lines the poet reveals, like the roots of the tree, human lives are also deeply attached to the Earth. So when uprooting the trees people are uprooting their lives and their identity which is connected with the Earth.

              The poet speaks about the banyan tree which is three times tall as their house. All its aerial roots fell to the ground. So cutting this banyan tree is very hard. First they cut its branches and they have been sawing it for seven days. “From thirty feet or more so first they cut the branches / Sawing them off for seven days and the heap was huge / Insects and birds began to leave the tree.” 

        In these lines, the reader compares this banyan tree with the king and his troops, how a king can be killed only after attacking his troops (branches). Similarly here the branches which stand as troops to the banyan tree are cut first. 

After the death of the king, it creates a huge mess in his kingdom and all his people have no other choice except escaping from that place, similarly after cutting the banyan tree, the heap was huge, so all the birds and insects which were living in it began to leave the tree.

            In the next point, the poet says that fifty men with their axes chopped the tree and after cutting its trunk, its age was revealed that its age was about two hundred years. So the reader feels that, the tree stood as an identity for their family, which they demolished by their own doings. 

    

            Then the poet and his family shifted to Bombay to Baroda. In their new place they could see not even a single tree. Now only in dreams they could see the banyan tree which grows, and in anger, its aerial roots are looking at the ground to strike. So the poet concludes with this line “Looking for the ground to strike”(25), that even trees have souls and they too feel.