Written by Sarah Berry
When I was a child, and relationships mattered more than money, a plant as a birthday gift was a treasure. In today’s times, one would, perhaps, wonder, but back then, I remember a bougainvillaea that was gifted to me on my 7th birthday. The plant remained a part of my extended family for almost two decades thereafter, until it completed its destined journey on this earth, perhaps to take another form, in another life.
The relationship that we shared was a quiet one. We had our own 
With just a little water, lots of love, and the shadow of the sun, she appeared to be happy and content in this world. Many years later, reading “A Tree!”, on World Environment Day brought back those memories.
It is a wonderful ‘marriage’ of the west (Klara Köttner-Benigni, an Austrian writer, journalist, and conservationist) and the east (the tribal artists from our country). A Tree! is a unique book and a unique friend… quiet, yet, so expressive.
Do you know what a tree is? Do you know it is so alive, right up to each of its extremities? Do you know how many it is home to? Do you know how selflessly it serves us? Do you know?
This book, A Tree!, in its extreme simplicity, binds the reader with an important message, not through a bundle of words, but rather through the lack of it, via paintings (Madhubani, Warli, Kurumba, and Gond) that speak volumes through the sheer artistic wonder, which India is so famous for.
Can a living being serve in its death too? Look at the tree, when it is cut, and its leaves still alive … still home to so many other living beings who thrive in its embrace … despite the death in progress. Does the tree just feel the pain or do all those whom it had embraced so lovingly, while alive and while dying, feel the pain of separation too?
It reminds me of a poem I wrote some years ago,
“It was but a long time ago … I was born …
Then in the middle of nowhere … now just dust and fumes …
How old am I, don’t know … nor care … for I bask in my magnificent beauty …
Not many bother to know more about me … they just take what they need … to quench their unsatisfying hunger and thirst … that’s my job, I tell myself … why even think about love …
The storms came, the droughts came and so did whatever had to … I stood my ground … unflinching and proud … and then came HE …
He rested his tired body against mine … his handsome face shadowed by my embrace … I enjoyed watching every inch of his being and was mesmerised by his touch … never had I felt anything like that … days passed, months perhaps, who knows … who cares … who even keeps track of time when you are in love …
Love, that elusive word I now understood … this is love …
I ached to talk with him … introduce myself … but just couldn’t … I wanted him to get to know me for what I truly am … and not for what the world saw me as … I was stuck in my being … I was stuck in my form … how I wished I could free myself … be like him … with him …
Then one day, as I had barely woken up, amidst all the chaos, I felt my being tom apart … uprooted and cast away like a non-entity … my beauty, my existence, my very meaning all discarded carelessly … I cried in pain, in humiliation and defeat … but who cared … they just had to build another structure…
Where was he? Please just let me see him one more time … please …
And then I realized, my wish had but finally come true … release …
All I now prayed for — Almighty make me a human in my next birth and not a tree … ”
If all trees would be granted this wish, what would happen? Would, we, humans, be able to sustain? To survive? A Tree! introduces pertinent questions, via TADAA — Think, Ask, Discuss, and Act, and taking Action seamlessly.
Why do we cut trees? Why, indeed? What can WE do about it? What can OUR children do about it? Have YOU ever planted a sapling? Cared for it? Watched it grow? Has a plant been an integral part of YOUR family? Or does a tree just serve our purpose of getting food, shade, décor, and comfort? Food-for-thought, is it not? Wake, up, oh human! Wake up!
A Tree! not only inspires reflection, introspection, and action on a pressing subject but also encourages the reader to discover more about the treasures of art that India can be so proud of — the treasures that would, otherwise, be lost in time.
A book is not just a collection of words, but a volume of experiences, and A Tree! could help one understand this better.
About the author: Sarah Berry heads External Affairs at Katha and hails from a multicultural background — her father being Indian and mother being German. She brings with her 24 years of diverse professional experiences covering public diplomacy/advocacy, training, outreach, content generation/management and communications, amongst others.
This article is a part of Katha’s segment titled ‘Conversations On Books’, a space for the Katha family, and friends of Katha, to talk about Katha books.