"What are you photographing here?", the policeman asked somewhat sternly, as he approached me. The young policewoman, eyebrows deeply furrowed, hovered behind her superior. She had been eyeing me with increasing concern as I had loitered near one of the entrances of the Brihanmumbai Mahanagar Palika (or Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) building for almost half an hour. Peering into the darkness of the grand old doorway she guarded, and at another entrance in an adjacent building, scanning up and down the street, and taking pictures of the building and surroundings. Clearly suspicious behavior in the modern anxious age of the security-state. I had been wondering how long I would have lasted doing something like this in front of, say, New York City Hall. The petite young woman, charged with guarding the gates of Mumbai's City Hall, right across the street from CST Station, site of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, was clearly nervous about my behaviour, and had sent the burlier cop to investigate.
"What are you photographing", the burlier policeman asked again, in Marathi, looking up towards the window my camera was pointing towards. I pointed up, to the lower right corner of the window, and said haltingly in my rusty Marathi, "That
Peepal sapling over there". He looked up, more closely, and said, "Ah, that peepal! Amazing, isn't it, how that little plant is growing up there on the wall? Who waters it? Where does it get its food and water? Isn't nature wonderful?" I was struggling in my head to compose a fuller explanation about my interest in urban ecology, and how I found these epiphytes fascinating. Also getting ready to explain that I was
waiting there for an important signature from one of the officers up in the buildings they were guarding. But all I really needed to do was nod in agreement, and look back up with him at the little peepal in shared wonder.
"What is he doing?", demanded the younger woman, urgently. He turned to her, pointed at the window sill and told her I was interested in the Peepal and other plants growing on buildings. "Why?", she asked, her voice cracking on the edge of alarm and confusion. "Because poets are like that!", he said, "They like to find beauty in strange places, and look for nature's wonders, like how that peepal is growing up there, with no one feeding or watering it." I could only nod again, and mumble something in agreement, my eyes probably even bigger now in wonder.
Then he turned towards me, extended his arm, shook my hand, smiled warmly in acknowledgment of a shared moment of connection with nature in the midst of the evening bustle of Mumbai, and ambled away towards his post in the other building. Well met, indeed, good sir...
The young woman, meanwhile, frowned again at me, and retreated to her post. Little did she know that the real long-term threat to the safety of the building she guarded came not from me, but from the tiny peepal which had gained a foothold in the crevice of that windowsill above her head. For the peepal has evolved playing the really long game of the rainforest epiphyte. Its seeds, carried by birds, wait patiently for the tiniest foothold in the crevices of another tree, cliff, or building. It sucks moisture from the air and the little pool in its crevice, makes its food from stray rays of the sun, and grows, slowly spreading its roots out in a growing embrace around whatever has provided it that initial space, tree, rock, building. In time, if left unharmed, it will grow its roots all the way to the ground, and all the way around its host, strangling the tree, crushing the rock, cracking open the building, even as it might hold them all together for a while longer. That little peepal may still be here a century or more from now, after this building has crumbled away with this city. Or until building maintenance sends someone up to that windowsill to uproot the upstart peepal - although its holy nature may give them some pause.
Nature is wonderful indeed, and dangerous. And so are people, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
Posted via email from a leaf warbler's gleanings
