On Killing a Tree- Gieve Patel

 

Gieve Patel is born in 1940 and he is an important presence in the history of modern Indian poetry in English. He is a poet, playwright, and painter, as well as a doctor by profession. His works held several exhibitions of paintings in India and abroad. He lives in Mumbai. Generally he is a “Body poet”, but here he acts as an “Eco poet” and speaks about the body of a tree. “On Killing a Tree” is briefly dealt with in the note on Dilip Chitre’s “The Felling of the Banyan Tree”.

This poem was included in the collection titled “Independent India” and was published in the year 1966. After the Indo-China war, many places and forests were destroyed in India. In order to build up factories and for their self accommodation, they cut trees. This poem might have written for creating awareness among the people and to insist not to cut trees. Because living beings do not get oxygen from factories, they must depend on trees for it.

            In the first stanza, the poet feels about the quality and the power of tree through the way it has grown. In the first line, “It takes much time to kill a tree, (1)”, he has used a word “Kill,” instead of using “Cut.” Because he said, cutting down trees is n an easy thing but killing them is not an easy one. He exposes that one should work for a long time with a sharp axe. Because the tree grows very slowly by consuming minerals, food from the Earth, and by absorbing sunlight, air, water for years and years. All its strength is gained from nature which stands for eternity. In these lines “And out of its leprous hide / Sprouting leaves” (8-9) in reader’s view is that, how the phoenix bird gets life through its ashes again similarly the trees provide new leaves even though it has leprous skin.

            In the next stanza, the author strongly says that hacking and chopping will not bother the tree. It bares so much pain and bleeds while cutting it but still it has the power to heal its hurt. Even though man cuts the tree close to the “Earth,” it has the ability to grow again to its former size.

            In the third stanza there is a twist in the poet’s tone because so far in the first and the second stanza he was expressing the power and good qualities of the tree but in the third stanza he is giving an elaborate idea to kill it properly. In these three lines “The root is to be pulled out­­-” (20), “And pulled out-snapped out / Or pulled out entirely,” (23-24), the poet continuously has used the word pulled out to express how the tree is been killed. He says that it should be killed from the root by cutting its connection completely from the Earth by snapping out its root. Though all its sources are pulled out still some its sources are rooted to the Earth. So only way to kill it, is by burning it and choking it in sun and air till it is withered. And finally it is done.

In the reader’s point of view he calls the people who cut trees murderers because, on killing a tree, they are unaware that they are taking the life of all living things. It is the fact that trees give one tonne oxygen per year and man’s usage of oxygen per year is 750 kg. So by killing tree, one cannot get enough oxygen to live. Therefore killing a tree is equal to killing a man. At least for the sake of safe guarding ourselves, people must stop killing trees and start growing it.