Column

Skywalks don’t have leaves. They are stark, unchanging, and angular. Leaves grow on trees. They form lacy patterns against the sky. They dance in the breeze, and drift gently down on a current of air, to land like a snowflake on hard cement.

They come in colours that boggle the imagination. Till you stop to look at leaves, and the trees that hold them, you will never realise just how many shades of green there are.
And then there are leaves that are red, brown, shiny, matte; rough… the textures are varied and wonderful.

When it is winter, many trees shed their leaves. They lie curled and crisp on the ground
and fly helter skelter with every whiff of the wind. They are wonderful to crunch underfoot, a sound that brings back memories of walking home from school, crunching on the leaves we pass under spreading trees. And of course there is the crunch of tires on gravel that is punctuated with the sound of leaves being crunched underfoot. Any child who has waited for Papa to come home from work on a rainy night knows the magic of that sound.

Other leaves pepper the ground with green, turning sidewalks and courtyards into a magical place that is first green, then brown, and then something the broom must sweep away.

Leaves provide cool, they are the magic that conjure up the stories of elves who paint them in the early morning to give them their shine. They are the sustenance for insects that in turn feed the birds, which in turn help propagate nature’s renewal.

Leaves… you can dry them and put them between the pages of a favourite book, to make a unique book mark, and not so long ago, when my table at work had a glass on it, I would bring back leaves from the many places I visited and press them under the glass, to remind me of my visits. It was a keepsake that never got boring.

Leaves… they sing. A whoosh whoosh in the soft breeze, and a clatter when they are tossed here and there when the clouds range across the sky and the monsoon marches in on the back of a seriously angry wind.

The smell of green is never forgotten. The sap of the tree, the fresh smell of the leaf, are memories city wallas like us have almost forgotten.

Walk into a village; walk the quiet roads lined with brush fences, or enter a jungle, and the smell of green will rejuvenate you, like no other elixir.

But we choose carbon emissions and exhaust smoke instead.

Leaves can heal. The green oxygenated breeze of a neem tree can chase away many ills, and keep mosquitoes at bay. The tulsi plant outside the house, now left untended as you rush about the business of life, can, ward of many a sickness, turning it away from the threshold of your home.

And our annals are full of the goodness that barks, leaves and flowers hold that can cure any ill known to man, and some yet to be known too.

Nature chose green as the colour for peace, as a soothing balm for tired eyes. (Ever wondered why hospital curtains are green?) She clothes plants in flowers seasonally, flowers that are bright and beautiful and play their role in attracting bees and giving poets enough to write about, but it is the leaf that holds it own, season after season.
We don’t have a spring in this city, but look out of the window and see how Nature plays her little game. That stick of a tree, playing dead through the past three months, is coming to life, and overnight seems to have sent out handful of bright green leaves; sentinels that will stand guard over the flowers that the branches will send out next.

The old, wizened rusty shield bearer outside my window has been threatened with white ant infestation so often, and every year I do worry will be its last, despite our efforts. But each year, at this time, it wakes up as if from the dead, and the tiny leaf buds open, and soon the tree is dancing its dance of grace, dressed like a girl out for a party in its flounces of green.

Leaves ask for nothing. They give their joy freely, and in their death and renewal, the branches tell us tales that we can take to heart, because they reflect our own lives.
But we choose not to look up at the sky. We choose to walk with our noses to the ground, watching for potholes in the road instead. We choose not to sit under the soothing shade of a tree and read a book; we prefer the air-conditioned confines of a multiplex instead.

And now that we have discovered that they are so indispensable to our lives and safety, we love skywalks. Even if, in the process of building them, we need to cut entire lines of leafy, venerable trees.