Let banyan experiment spawn army of eco saviours

Representational Image. Photo/Ashish Raje

When a concept moves from a fashionable phrase to part of the consciousness and becomes reality, you know it has hit the spot. Going green took on meaning when a group of residents took it upon themselves to transport a broken banyan tree from their building to a park, to give it a chance at a new life.

This particular banyan tree at a building in Peddar Road in south Mumbai was uprooted and broken as Cyclone Tauktae hit the city, raising wind speeds to over 100 km per hour. The locals got the tree cut, put onto a truck and transported to the Priyadarshini Park. The tree was transplanted in the Nepean Sea Road garden, and now, they are hoping it will grow into the stunning banyan that it once was. The jury is out on whether the tree will survive. The bigger point is the effort made by people to see that the tree gets another shot at life.

This is a pointer to how environment consciousness has moved from the periphery or cocktail chatter to action. It also shows that ordinary persons are not waiting for green warriors to start saving the environment but trying to do what they can. They have started believing that the onus is on them, not just on others and they can and will do more than chant go-green mantras.

It is when any cause, it may not be one of the environment, is driven by people power that one sees real change on the ground. It is the strength in numbers and a willingness to translate consciousness into action, that can actually drive worth movements forward.

We can be eco saviours in our own way. From shunning plastic, to planting many more trees for the ones that have perished in the recent cyclone, let us work to prove that in the ordinary lies the capacity for extraordinary.