By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

Last week I wrote about how thoughtlessly our civic authorities have behaved in chopping down forty beautiful Yellow Shower trees on the Hyder Ali Road, under the lame pretext of a need to widen it. These are the same authorities vested with the almost sacred responsibility of safeguarding our public places and public assets, in whatever form they are.

Our trees, humble as they may be, and wherever they may be, are among our most precious assets, deserving protection from all dangers, natural or man-made.  And, yet, we saw a full forty of them, all in the prime of their youth, helplessly felled by man’s unkind hands, while they had braved the harsh elements and stood their ground, for nearly a hundred years.

Citizens’ views were not taken into consideration, they were never informed about this proposal in advance, public opinion was never called for and not a single tax-paying Mysurean was consulted before embarking on this mindless act. Yes, mindless is the only word that comes to mind and seems appropriate here, because there were many other options and many saner ways of ways of widening that road without being so destructive.

But firstly, the question we have to ask the authorities is what they have achieved by widening a part of the very same road nearly ten years ago? I am referring to the part of the road that runs from Five Lights Circle to the beginning of the compound of Karnataka Police Academy. This stretch was widened by nearly thirty feet, encroaching upon the pristine lawns of our more than two century year old Government House and making an orphaned island of the majestic arched gate of the premises, which now stands like a solitary relic from the past, completely unconnected with anything from the present.

And, how was this widening achieved? By chopping down some of our city’s most beautiful Gulmohar trees that stood on the sidewalk. Noticing this work starting, I hastened to write an article with their photographs, about saving those trees, by relocating them to some other place, if widening work was absolutely necessary and unavoidable. A regular reader of SOM and my column, Ravi Subbaraman, a Chartered Accountant from Yadavagiri, immediately responded by saying that he would support and share the cost of transplanting operation, if only the authorities gave a thought to the proposal. That is the kind of citizens we have in our midst.

And, how did our authorities respond to his gracious offer of help?  In nothing short of a clandestinely criminal act, the moment it was voiced in SOM, they chopped down every one of those trees overnight, fearing that the road widening would be thwarted by public protests. That is how crass, thoughtless and unamenable to reasoning, they were.

Having gone ahead with this act and widening that short stretch of road to their satisfaction, what was the result? They abruptly stopped their widening process at the beginning of the compound of Karnataka Police Academy for some strange reason and that is where it has stood, in a blank stone wall, at a right angle to the course of the road.

And, the only noble purpose this abruptly ending road has been serving for almost ten years, is as a free and unhindered parking place for the dozens of tourist cabs, tempos and buses that only serve the needs of the many hotels in the vicinity of the place. It does not help the free flow of traffic in any way because it simply can’t, in its present state.

The picture that I have taken of the spot a few days ago, clearly shows its present role and the question that we should ask here is, when they were not successful in continuing the widening of this road beyond the Police Academy, what was the need for continuing the process for the rest of the road, beyond a narrow bottleneck, by sacrificing forty trees? Does it make any sense? So, it is natural that Mysureans rose up in protest against this massacre and it is natural that they are now calling for an explanation for this kind of mindlessness and it is good that our Forest Minister has promised an inquiry into the incident.

Thankfully, in a surprisingly quick, damage control exercise, our social forestry squad has stepped in and planted saplings all along one side of the massacre site. And true to his own good nature and the nature of most all-forgiving Mysureans, our own saviour of trees, N. Raghavan of Raghulal and Co., has stepped in with his kindness and has installed, durable metal tree guards around every one of those baby trees, now looking up with hope, at the open sky.

Needless to say, because he needs no introduction, due to his kindness which we see all around us, this quiet and humble man has been our tree saviour, who has installed nearly twenty-five thousand tree guards in and around our city.

Seeing this transformation has certainly lessened my deep pain a great deal and has given me hope that our descendants too, will once again see fully grown trees standing, where their ancestors once stood!

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