Plant a tree this monsoon!

I wish, I wish, I wish that everyone decided to plant ONE tree this monsoon. It would make such a difference to Bangalore. Really, truly! If we just visited Delhi we could see there is such a difference between Bangalore and Delhi. There is MUCH MORE greenery in Delhi. Yes! You read right, we have hacked off all our green cover in the heart of Bangalore and Delhi seems much greener to me now. We have even lost all our traffic islands which we were so proud of.

Instead we have nothing, just traffic jams and madly honking cars and buses with rashly driven autos.

And I have to fight to keep my Camel Foot alive on the pavement from that marauding doctor from the Narayana Netralaya hospital next door.

So, we went off to Lalbagh a week in advance and bought 10 Ratnagiri Alphonso's and made a session of planting in Hoskote. They will take some time to grow of course, but when they do, we will wallow in home grown, organic mangos!

DON'T buy your fruit trees from anywhere but Lalbagh. It is only when you grow them and after 5 years when they fruit that you realise you have been rooked. All the trees we bought from Lalbagh are true grafts. But those bought from other nurseries are total fakes.

We bought two pomogranates from Lalbagh and they are the exact Ganesh maroon variety we bought and paid for. However we bought 10 trees from another nursery and now we see ONE is Ganesh, the rest are just regular which is really galling as no one wants to cut down a tree.

Parental Care

The picture on the left, sent to me by my friend Salma evoked a -- is this for real response in me. I could not imagine a bird being so loving and so very caring of its young. Obviously I was wrong because I sent my question and the picture to an ornithologist
in my bird group named S. Subramanya. This was his response:

"I would believe so Marianne. This image is of a male Orange-breasted Green Pigeon, a denizen of the Western Ghats and the forests of the North-east. Breeds between March-September with the ideal period being April-June. Typically lays two eggs in a nest which is a flimsy platform of twigs, built some 6-8m up in a moderate canopy and both the parents take part in domestic duties of nest-building, incubation (12-14 days) and nestling care.

The picture was doing the email rounds under the banner of parental love and Subu said:

I would not term it as parental love, could well be part of the species parental care.

Feast your eyes on the picture which will evoke a warm feeling in the breast of any parent!

The colour purple!

It's been a roller coaster ride of curiosity to get to know the name of the purple flower which is in the flower arrangements. Check the pictures!

We went for Anu and Shirins Silver Wedding celebrations on Saturday the 9th June and all the arrangements in church had this strange purple flower. I really did not pay too much attention to them except when I went up for communion and got a closer look.
Even then nothing struck me as strange and I surmised they were artificial flowers Shirin had brought from the US.

It was only later at Angela and Pichiks home where the celebration dinner was held that Angela told me they were for real.

Pow! that was an eye opener and after that I made so many enquiries and my story has been sent off to the Hindu for publishing.

Nature never fails to fill my life with joy and beauty from the most unexpected quarters.

Flowers of passion!

It was the Jesuit missionaries of the 17th Century,who followed in the wake of the (then) all-conquering Spanish empire,that saw the first Passion flower as part of God's bountiful creation.The passion flower is so called because it symbolised Christ's suffering on the cross. Passion flowers are climbing vines, probably distant relatives of the cucumber.The flower, however, is a thing of unique and undisputed beauty, regardless of the provenance of its design.

The typical passion flower has five sepals and five petals, which are almost identical to the sepals. Immediately inside these is a structure with a shape found in no other flower. This corona is formed of two stacked rings of very fine filaments, often brightly coloured like the sepals and petals. Protruding from the centre of the corona is a small post, upon which rests the ovaries, five stamens and anthers, and three stigmas.The five anthers were the five wounds on Christ's body, and the three stigmas the nails. The leaves were the spear that pierced His side, and the tendrils the scourges that flayed His flesh.But fact remains that the passion flower is indeed an exquisitely beautiful plant.

Passion flowers are quite easy to grow. You can grow your own passion vines cheaply and easily by getting your seed from the fruit rather than a nursery and letting them climb all over a pandal or a fence.

I make a really divine juice from the fruit which does use a lot of sugar but which is full of the goodness of vitamin C.

Bulbuls attracted to fruiting palm in garden!

I love those red vented perky Bulbuls with their noisy, inquisitive calls in the garden. But with our garden city becoming a chrome and glass monstrosity with gardens few and far between where we live, it has been a happy surprise to find the Bulbuls are back! The exotic palms that we have in the garden are heavy with fruit. I don't think they are edible by man so we have the Bulbuls during the day and the bats at night!

The fruit bats can be scary as they swoop in when you least expect them, brushing almost past your ears as you park the car or come in late from a show at the club.

I had hoped the Bulbuls would nest in the Raat ki raani or in the bougaenvillea, but thats stretching it a bit too far! They come in bright and early and its a nice medley hearing them go peek, peek flashing in and out of the fruit along with the more sedate Ashy Prinias call as it hops on the hibiscus branches looking for insects to feed on.

Electric buses for Beijing!

Standing on the edge of the road waiting for the diesel bus thunder past engulfing you in a miasma of choking smoke, it is hard to argue against wanting electric vehicles to become the vehicle of 2012. Buildings and motorized vehicles are responsible for the majority of CO2 emissions in cities. in the battle against climate change cities are trying to coax die-hard motorists to adapt to electric vehicle technology by introducing electric vehicles for public transport.
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At the ITF 2011 in Leipzig, sitting in side event that paid tribute to Innovators in the transport industry, Henry Li a senior Director of BYD Company in China unveiled his country's plan to unleash a fleet of electric buses on the roads of Beijing to help cleanse the choking pollution of the city. " There is an urgent need to change to solar run electric buses in Beijing which is considered the most polluted city in the world. There is an urgent need of these buses and one bus will take the place of 30 private cars and one solar taxi the place of 10 private smoke belching cars."

Noise levels are lowered, diesel consumption is reduced and there is no heat radiation, said Lee. "This is a great help in cutting emissions in the city areas and it also makes transport accessible to all."

So in conclusion Li said, Electric cars and buses are the quickest way to reduce CO2 emissions from the city centre.

There is however a paradox ! The bus is so silent that it can cause accidents due to its noiseless movement!

A tree is greviously mutilated on World Environment day 2011

It was World Environment Day and India had the honour of hosting the International World Environment Day 2011 for the very first time. Mr Jairam Ramesh our erudite and enthusiastic environment minister called trees ‘water pumps’ and paradoxically the event was devoted to ‘Forests: Nature at your service’. As a media fellow of UNEP I was proud to sit in the sudience and listen to Mr Ramesh tell the world that India was among the developing nations working towards addressing the pressures of ecological change. He told us about India’s Rural Employment Act and the country’s encouragement of renewable energy use to scale up green growth.

In a press session I brought up the shame of the felling hundreds of ancient trees in Bangalore in the name of infrastructure works. Was there a policy in place to replant and nuture the trees that had been felled? I also asked Mr Ramesh about the spiralling levels of pollution in Bangalore and how was it that Delhi was so much cleaner than I remembered when I visited 10 years previously? CNG was the secret answer and why cant our policy makers do the same here rather than having an asthmatic wheezing population growing every day?

Far away down South in Bangalore a tree planted by me and my baby sons 15 years ago was being decimated and mutilated on Castle Street at that very moment.The beautiful spreading branches of the Camel Foot tree we had planted and nurtured, was hiding the huge and ugly board of the Netralaya Mantralaya which had just opened its hospital doors. “ Madam the tree is not letting us to have a grand opening of our hospital, so I have trimmed it,” said the contractor, to the massive felling of half the tree.

Dr. Bhujang Shetty the eye surgeon whose hospital it is refused to comment and just laughed off my complaint.

Mr Krishnappa the Deputy Forest Conservator of the BBMP said, “ Do you have photos to prove it was cut by the hospital? If you do not have photos and you do not make a written compalint there is no proof that they did it and we cannot take action! Do what you want!”

In desperation I called Dr MH Swaminath who is the Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest Resource Management. “ Are you saying they have already cut the branches?” he asked. I replied in the affirmative and said I had pictures of the branches thrown in the garbage dump a little further up the road.
“I will immediately take action Madam” he said and promised to get to Krishnappa about filing a case against the hospital about the damage done.

I have no idea if anything will be done. It is indeed a shame that Bangalore steps back and allows this vandalism in the name of progress. A tree saves us from the dust bowl Bangalore has become and if a hospital cannot understand that God help us all.
‘Green Delhi’ was the martial cry in the capital and the tree cover I saw was phenomenol. What do we in Bangalore have to say in response? Can we ever green Bangalore the Delhi way? We were the garden city once upon a time. We need stricter laws and many more Dr Swaminath’s who will respond when we call. And we do need citizens who will act to help our silent tree friends who are being mercilesslyfelled and destroyed.

UNEP Chief Mr Achim Steiner said, “ A tree standing has more value than a tree cut. Development must work with nature and not against it.”

So save our trees if you can help them is my earnest appeal. They clean up our pollution for free. If we understand the enormity of the job they do for us, we would all rise up in arms to have a cleaner, greener and more healthy Bangalore.

(The writer covered the World Environment Day 2011 in New Delhi as a fellow of UNEP)