Trees, life and art
WE had very little idea — my wife and I — of how a fortnight-long visit by two old friends from Heidelberg in Germany, Susanne Hawkes and her husband, Leslie, was going to turn out. The personal pleasure of having them with us apart, we knew that Susanne was here on a mission: a gifted photographer, she wanted to photograph Indian trees.
One can think of countless places in India which one would associate with uncommon, picturesque trees. One can in fact even think of specific, great trees which have a certain renown, almost a history, at these places. But,no, Susanne was not necessarily after the uncommon or the picturesque: what she wanted to see was if the lives of common men and women, even in a relatively modern city like Chandigarh and its environs, continue to be entwined, as in the past of India around trees. At the very least, what awareness of trees existed here: not only of their sacredness, but of their place in life.
It was not going to be easy, one knew. Locating attractive, full-grown trees, the very names of which have a certain resonance in our culture—the pipal, the bar or bargad, the mango, the ashoka, for instance—was not difficult: what was likely to pose problems was the act of determining, visually, how trees and life grew together. For—one thought one knew it well—in modern life a marked distancing has come about: for the common man, the stresses of daily life are almost too much for him to be able to spare much thought for trees. But we were wrong. The more Susanne, with my wife’s help and that of our friends, looked around and probed, the more it became evident that the feeling for trees was still strong; the aroma of sacredness still lingered on them in some manner.
Much happened in those two weeks. A lot of trees were seen and photographed; rituals centring upon them were observed; the unbroken rhythm of life around them was recorded; tales were heard and noted down. When the word spread among friends, and friends of friends, snippets of information started trickling in. Sporadically, at first, but thick and fast as the days went by.
A natural tree to photograph—for it is the most easily identified and dramatic of all Indian trees — was of course the bar, the ficus bengalensis of the botanists, the nyagrodha of ancient thought, with its magnificent proportions, and its mysterious aerial roots. But not many old and aged bar-s are around in these parts. Some distances were covered as “news” of old bar-s, in this village or along that route, started coming in.
Each day someone—the gardener, the peon, the domestic help—would come up with fresh information about a large bar somewhere, and a plan of action would begin to be formed. There was excitement as stories of larger and still larger bar-s poured in: it was like news rushing in from different fronts on the battlefield. As soon as a hoary old bar had been photographed, another and still larger bar was reported.
Nothing did really match, however, the bar in a nearby village (Susanne’s secret still!), which was literally spread over close to three acres of land. I only saw the photographs that Susanne took, and these took your breath away. For this single tree with its ancient, time-scarred trunk had simply gone on expanding, for upwards of some 200 years perhaps, claiming more and more space as its aerial roots descended to the earth and became trunks in their own right, throwing out still more aerial roots, dense in foliage, enveloping everything around themselves.
Appropriately, it seemed, the villagers see their tree as something of an ancestor, a baba to be revered and approached with respect. Under this tree, sadhus had set up a “dera”, no one has ever been allowed by the community to cut any part of it; no fire is ever lit under it. Here, if nowhere else in the world, the tree is a part of everyone’s awareness. Here, tree and life grow together, it seems....
But where, one might well ask, does art come into all this? In the way that trees have been seen and rendered in our early sculptures and paintings, of course. With no emphasis on accuracy, but on feeling, on capturing as it were the souls of the objects. Images come crowding to the mind as one thinks of trees in Indian art: fertility deities in early terracottas; great luscious vrikshakas from Sanchi and Bharhut, deriving life from trees and imparting it to them in turn; sacred sandals resting upon thrones under trees, subtle reminders of great presences; languishing, love-lorn nayikas standing beneath trees which spread their branches almost protectively over them; trees glowing in the midst of dark landscapes, as if lit from within; and so on. As Susanne’s photography project proceeded, we spoke of these things, and more.
Of life, knowledge
For me, one of the most intriguing of sculptures remains that small bronze of a tree, now in an American collection, which has often been published under the caption: ‘The Tree of Life’. From a relatively short central trunk shoot forth on either side, symmetrically, long curving branches, in a lyrical spread, their length gradually diminishing upwards to form a perfect crown. Each branch is joined to the one above it with sparsely placed individual leaves, creating a broad filigree pattern, as it were. It is a wonderfully crafted, sensuous work. But what adds to its charm is a certain nagging elusiveness as regards its meaning which remains. There is life in the tree: a many hooded snake sits coiled up in the heart of the crown, two bejewelled monkey figures hug the trunk, a cow each on either side stands on the ground below. And, almost unseen at first, a host of those mythical hamsa birds, each daintily crafted, each occupying quietly the furthest tip of a branch. What does it all mean, one keeps wondering? Are there hints of knowledge, wisdom, discrimination, here perhaps?
This article was published on March 26, 1999
