Tulsidas wrote in the Ramcharitmanas about their poetic movement, said a friend, as I stared at the peepal leaves. I sat, silent and smitten, amazed yet again, at the swaying of the leaves. The poet, in the epic’s Ayodhya Khand, had allured to a wavering mind, the friend added.
From a distance, the swaying leaves appear like happy children playing, while a closer view makes me wonder if this is what the wind chimes at the Pearly Gates look like. It is a special feeling to rest my back against the tree trunk and look at the sky — netted by its dangling leaves. With the peepal, it is more a case of sitting with the tree rather than sitting under the tree. Intrigued by the beauty and mystery of the Asvattha or the Bodhivriksha, as it is also known, and egged on by the friend’s comment, I looked up more.
Majestic anyway
Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli write in their book Cities and Canopies , ‘The sound is like the pattering of raindrops, as the wavy leaves brush against each other’. They further add, ‘The same tree in the dry season, stripped of all its leaves, looks equally majestic’. While Sriram Aravamundan writes, ‘The leaves appear to sway and shimmy even in the stillest of weather, when not a leaf on any other tree stirs’.
This particular peepal tree that I visit regularly is also friends with a neem tree, which stands a dozen or so feet away. The branches of both trees meet up in the air. They remind me of how the younger me often wanted to meet friends. Some of the peepal’s branches, strong and gentle, have grown in other direction as well, towards the river, for instance. Does it seek a better view of the flowing water?
I also wonder what the tree thinks of or if it speaks to the freshly planted saplings along the river bank. On the peepal’s branches I have on multiple occasions spotted civets scampering up and down. Of course, the barbets always seem to be around.
The towering tree with its magnificent trunk has a soothing presence. Perhaps this is why wiser men and women have planted the peepal at temples and other places of worship and peace.
Not all peepal trees boast of a grand and stately demeanour though. Many of them sprout on rooftops.
A friend, who loves trees even more than I do, had once asked me if the peepal has an innate sense that allows it to figure out that people have vacated the building. For, she had added, it then takes over the entire building slowly and silently. Renu Singhal notes, ‘One of the unlikeliest of places where I spotted a peepal sprout was in the rusted bodywork of a passing bus... waving triumphantly green beside a window...’
In battle hymns
The adoration of the peepal is anything but recent. Mike Shanahan, the author of Ladders to Heaven writes, ‘Buddhists, Hindus and Jains have revered this species for more than two millennia. The same tree featured in battle hymns sung by the Vedic people 3,500 years ago. And, 1,500 years earlier, it appeared in the myths and art of the Indus Valley Civilisation’. Two of its other names also highlight its religious associations, Sacred Fig and Ficus religiosa .
Connecting the past and the present is one of the world’s most famous peepal trees — the one at the Mabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya. Recent reports say that the pandemic-induced lockdown has been beneficial for the tree. It is telling on the times that the closure of the temple has led to improvement of the tree’s health. Sarnath, another place associated with Buddha, also has a peepal that is revered. Here too efforts have been taken up during recent years to save the tree.
Although I always see its leaves scattered beneath the tree’s canopy, one morning, when I visited it after a gap of a few weeks, I saw many figs strewn about. ‘Ripe figs are devoured by birds and are a favourite food of migrating rosy starlings,’ writes Pradip Krishen in his Jungle Trees of Central India .
Ben Crair eloquently describes figs as, ‘enclosed flowers that bloom modestly inward, unlike the flamboyant showoffs on other plants’. He adds, ‘Because a fig is actually a ball of flowers, it requires pollination to reproduce, but because the flowers are sealed, not just any bug can crawl inside. That task belongs to a minuscule insect known as the fig wasp, whose life cycle is intertwined with the fig’s’.
Each time I read, there seems to be more, much more to the peepal. No wonder Krishna, in Bhagwad Gita , referred to himself as the peepal amongst trees.
The writer is a history buff and avid blogger.
