The Felling of the Banyan Tree- Dilip Chitre

Kakatiya University Warangal

II Year Sem 4. Unit 3 

&

Osmania University I yr Sem 2 - Unit 5

The Felling of the Banyan Tree

                           Dilip Chitre

My father told the tenants to leave

Who lived on the houses surrounding our house on the hill

One by one the structures were demolished

Only our own house remained and the trees

Trees are sacred my grandmother used to say

Felling them is a crime but he massacred them all

The sheoga, the oudumber, the neem were all cut down

But the huge banyan tree stood like a problem

Whose roots lay deeper than all our lives

My father ordered it to be removed

The banyan tree was three times as tall as our house

Its trunk had a circumference of fifty feet

Its scraggy aerial roots fell to the ground

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

And then they came to its massive trunk

Fifty men with axes chopped and chopped

The great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years

We watched in terror and fascination this slaughter

As a raw mythology revealed to us its age

Soon afterwards we left Baroda for Bombay

Where there are no trees except the one

Which grows and seethes in one’s dreams, its aerial roots

Looking for the ground to strike.

Question:- The Felling of the Banyan Tree " reflects the harmony of the natural ecosystem. Discuss?( KU June 2023) 

About the author

 Dilip Chitre ( (1938–2009)

Dilip Purushottam Chitre born on 17 September, 1938 in Baroda, Gujarat. He is one of the best poets of post-independence India. He was a poet, translator, short story writer, painter & filmmaker."The Felling of the Banyan Tree" is taken from his book Traveling In A Cage in 1980. In 1951, at the age of 12, his family moved to Mumbai. He is a bilingual writer. He wrote both in English and Marathi. 

His best-known work was the English translation of the devotional poems of the 17th century bhakti poet, Tukaram published as 'Says Tuka'. This translation received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1994 and in the same year he also won Sahithya Akademi Award for his original work "Ekoon kavita".

About the poem

The autobiographical poem "The Felling of the Banyan Tree" is a free verse poem with 25 lines in total. Themes are uprootedness, unsettlement, alienation and destruction of ecosystem. Main theme of the poem is uprootedness, the idea of leaving a family home. 

The poem is about the reminiscences of Dilip Chitre's childhood. He emphasises the balance of the natural ecosystem by lamenting the felling of huge trees.

The Banyan tree is a metaphor for his life. On the hillsides of Baroda, there were some tenant houses all around his ancestral house. His father told the tenants to vacate the houses so that he could demolish them. As a part of the demolition, he cut down all the trees, including the Sheoga (Dumbstick),Oudumber( Fig tree) , and Neem trees. Their house and a big banyan tree remained after the felling of trees. His grandmother used to say that she was scared, as felling trees was a crime and a bad omen. The Hindus worship trees such as Peepal, Tulasi, and Neem. The trees are sacred to them, and they have a great place in Hindu mythology. Nevertheless, his father butchered all of the trees and ordered the removal of the huge banyan tree with deeper roots, which stood as a challenge for the tree cutters. 

The poet vividly describes the huge tree features, whose trunk has a fifty-foot circumference and long aerial roots almost touching the ground. Fifty men, with axes for seven days, first cut the branches. Insects and birds began to leave the big tree, which had been their house for several years. Then cutters chopped the massive trunk. The trunk's rings revealed its age to be 200 years old. The poet family watched this slaughter in terror. Then their family left for Bombay, where he didn't see any trees except in his dreams. The huge tree’s aerial roots were trying to find a place to settle down on the ground, which had turned into concrete buildings. The poet echoes for biodiversity and speaks out against deforestation.

Glossary

Tenant- A person who pays rent to a landowner in exchange for living on their property.

Demolished- (of a building) destroyed or knocked down.

sacred - holy

fell- to cut down.

massacre - to brutally kill.

circumference - the outer boundary of a circular shape

scraggly- badly grown, uneven.

massive - very large.

fascination- a very strong attraction.

slaughter- the killing of a large number of people or animals.

seethes- surges: moves about widly and roughly.

aerial roots - roots hanging down to earth from the tree branches.

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