Deep Rooted Banyan

The traffic jam on the road between Alwarthirunagar and Ramapuram has a very specific cause: an old banyan tree near the college. The Corporation officials have decided it needs to go.

I’m the one fighting to keep it.

I met Uma in fourth standard. I was working as a money collector on a share auto — the kind of job that lets a kid from a difficult home feel useful. She used to ride every day. Over months, we became the closest of friends, and in the evenings we would sit beneath that banyan tree and talk for hours about everything and nothing. After my mother died and my stepmother made home feel cold, Uma was the warmth I went back to.

She married Venkatesh Annan, the auto owner. I was honoured to be part of the wedding — to stand there and celebrate something I had watched grow. Then the rumours started. And then Uma was gone, by her own hand, under circumstances that still don’t sit right with me.

I kept visiting the tree. It sounds strange to explain to someone who hasn’t needed it, but beneath those roots, she felt present. I would speak to her there and come back with something — a sense of direction, a calmer mind, a reason to keep going. She became a guardian angel whose address was a tree on a road in Chennai.

I’m a bank manager now. I still visit.

When the Corporation announced they were cutting it down, I called lawyer Vasudeva Nair. The college students were already restless about it. Together we filed a public interest litigation and brought in NGO support. The case moved faster than I expected.

The judgment came today. My phone rang.

“Hello!!! Tell me, Sir…”

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To be continued.