http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20091219/edit.htm#5
Peepal tree No. 918
by Jupinderjit Singh
Pillar No. 918 on the Indo-Pak zero line on Suchetgarh-Sialkot border has gone missing. The ever-watchful guards of both countries watched it disappear helplessly.Much after men from both countries partitioned the land and demarcated this area, a giant Peepal tree sprouted exactly on the zero line and consumed millimetre by millimetre the brick-lined pillar, of the size of milestones we see on the roads.
The tree, seemingly revered by both forces now, quietly witnessed the bloodbath between two countries over the years, all the time braving bullets and bombs, working quietly on the stone on its own. It eventually sucked it into its giant trunk engulfing the man-made structure with nature’s wood.
The tree was there well before my eyes as I, part of a group of “lucky” visitors, could stand next to it and touch and feel it. There was a time in my childhood in Khalra village in Amritsar when our tractor would wade around such “border signs” while ploughing the land.
That time the borders had just such stones and no fencing and bundhs. Terrorists had not started sneaking in from across the border. And one didn’t need VIP position or special access to go close to the stones as one has to do now.
After seeing hundreds of such stones, standing alone and strong in our village, or along Punjab border with Pakistan and even in Rajasthan where sandstorms can only temporarily erase them, I stood wonderstruck before this tree at the working of mother nature.
The speechless tree had its own way of telling us what the nature thought of such man-made boundaries.
No one could have fed it water or manure. It is dependent totally on rains but seems to have taken vital supplements from the brick-lined pillar it gulped and grew strong.
I felt the light brown trunk and it seemed it was crying. I felt I was hugging the one body of two brothers, India and Pakistan. Separated like Siamese twins, they have no love lost now and vie for each other’s blood and of the progeny as well.
Whose tree is it? One half is in India and the other in Pakistan with branches extending their shade on both sides equally.
As I walk back towards the Indian territory with BSF men closing the huge iron gates behind me, I brood on the message given by Mother Earth. We can create borders on her chest, dividing her breasts for the two sons to feed on. But can we divide the land and mark it mine or yours and make the mother nature behave accordingly?
But why was a new pillar not put up? Wasn’t the numbering jeopardised? I asked the technical question to an officer. “Well, the tree is the Pillar No. 918 now. We have marked on it the number of the pillar it consumed.”
The tree that tried to finish the man-made border is now part of the border, one of the thousands of such pillars. I felt as someone just took life out of something growing rapidly. That is what man does to nature.
(published as Middle in The Tribune editorial page. dated December 19)
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