Being one with the tree

“Oooh oooh!” Himal mimics the owls who make their nests in cavities high in the upper branches of the Banyan tree. “There’s quite a few of them. They come out in the evening. You can hear them.” He imitates their ‘ooh ooh ooh’ call again. “They are beautiful birds. Not very big. Big eyes. Sharp noses. In the evening you can see them fly in and out. Maybe the owls are the spirit of the tree, who knows?” He laughs lightly.

Himal Jaiswal came to Auroville 45 years ago as a seven year old boy. Approximately two years ago he started working in the Matrimandir gardens. At the time, the Banyan tree was badly infected with white fungus. “In the beginning when I came to work, I was asked if I was interested to help heal the tree, and I said, yes. The tree had reached a stage where branches might have collapsed, so we had to do something.

Himal felt such a responsibility towards the tree. “The Banyan is like the spirit of Auroville, and it was not happy. At least the middle trunk was not happy, along with some big branches going out of it.” But after regular applications of neem, turmeric, jaggery, and probiotic powder, the tree regained its health.

Not just anyone could have done the job. With a small step ladder, and a sprayer filled with a neem oil solution, Himal wriggles through the small opening as if in a reverse birth. “Me being small makes it just possible that I can crawl in. It is not easy. There are sharp things inside the tree. You have to take care. There is just enough space that I can kind of turn around in there. That’s about it.”

Himal describes being inside the tree as ‘magical’. “It’s like being in a cave, except it’s much warmer. You can see through the cracks in the tree trunk.” He says people come to pray at the tree and he sometimes finds little mementos that people leave inside, like a picture of someone’s beloved.

“The tree was here at the beginning of Auroville. As children, we played under it, rode our horses under it. Gatherings took place; very important decisions of Auroville were made under this tree,” Himal says, recalling the stories he’s been told and his own memories from when he was a child. “From what I know, local goatherds would come every day and feed their goats leaves from the lower branches. After Auroville started, Auroville pioneers took over care of the tree and gave it space, compost and love, and it grew bigger and bigger. It’s said that the Divine Mother in Pondicherry once told somebody to go to Auroville and look at the tree because there seemed to be a problem. The person came and saw that there was a knife stuck in the tree. So she was able to perceive from there that something was wrong with the tree.”

Himal feels fortunate to be able to protect the tree. “Though it’s difficult, we must do it. The tree is like the mother of Auroville. Being inside the tree is like being inside the womb of a mother. It is a very soothing, calm feeling.”

He wonders aloud, “Maybe the Divine Mother chose me to take care of the tree.”

Maybe she did. Maybe she also chose the tree.