A couple of days ago, Adilabad Collector D. Divya categorically rejected an oral proposal by an Adivasi to cut down the clump of old teak trees near the Nagoba temple of Keslapur village in Indervelli mandal where the famous jatara is to start on January 24.
In doing so, she may have prevented bad luck befalling the person who proposed to cut the trees, going by the belief of Mesram clan Raj Gond tribals.
The sight of the fully mature, commercially valuable teak trees makes some people suggest that the wood be sold to fund the development around the temple. In the latest instance, the person who proposed felling of trees did so on the ground that the trees were old, making them weak enough to fall on their own.
“All those who had gained approval of authorities to cut the trees and transport them had ill luck striking them in different forms, especially health-wise. Some of them even died soon after obtaining permission,” claims Keslapur patel or village head man Mesram Venkat Rao as he narrates the myth surrounding the teak trees which is something akin to the curse of the Pharaohs.
According to Parubai, the septuagenarian mother of the patel, there were at least 1,000 trees around the temple, most of them teak, until the 1970s. In 2014, a census of the trees conducted by the Forest Department revealed that only 203 teak remained as hundreds were either cut by smugglers or fell on getting aged.
“The first one to seek official permission to fell the clump was a contractor from Warangal who died in an accident just a day before he could start chopping the trees and his son lost his limbs. There was another contractor from Mancherial who also died before he could wield the axe,” recalls Mesram Anand Rao, a former chairman of the Nagoba temple committee.
“When I had accompanied a contractor who had gone to the authorities to seek permission for felling the ageing trees, the serpent god appeared in my dream. I immediately went to the temple and performed puja to appease Nagoba,” he shares about the year-old incident.
Whenever a weak tree falls on its own, its puja is performed in the temple, says Mr. Venkat Rao.
“We believe that it is by order of the revered Nagoba that the tree has fallen,” he adds.