The man who loved trees

Gagan K Teja

ATREE is like a mother to me. These lines from the famed poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s immortal song, Rukh (tree), resonate in my mind every morning when I take a stroll in the beautiful Environment Park in Patiala.

Batalvi goes on to compare the trees to a loving mother, calling the saplings children, and endearingly, some young like his lover. As I walk under the shade of the tall trees, inhaling their aroma and the cuckoo singing its love song at high pitch, I bow to those who had planted these trees for future generations. It is at such moments that I feel a heaviness in my heart. 

Environmentalist Karamjit Singh Jatana had developed a wild forest strip into a beautifully laid-out park. For the past few months, he was in touch with me for writing an article on the park. He thought of it as a tribute to those who had laboured on the park. It was like his baby. He had nurtured it more than anyone else.  

He would often tease me for being lazy and not working on the story. I wanted to write, but words were not flowing out. But then, a journalist is often caught in day-to-day developments and assignments. Where is the time?

A few weeks back, he insisted that I should at least start visiting the park for my morning jog, and forget about the story. My first visit, and I realised what a treasure trove of healthy environment it was. It became a daily routine. That’s when I experienced the irresistible urge to write about it. The story came effortlessly to my mind. On  May 12, I called him to enquire about the struggle to develop the park. He laughed aloud — I was finally doing the story!

Again, a newspaper struggles with space constraints every day. The story could not be used immediately. I told him that it would appear the next day (May 14). But it did not. Disappointed, I wondered what explanation I would offer when he called to enquire about the fate of the story.

However, what happened an hour later shocked me to my core. I received an SMS that he had passed away following cardiac arrest on the night of May 13. I kept telling myself it could not be true.  

Never before had I felt so hopeless; I had written a story on him, but he would not read it.   

Ironically, the next day, two stories appeared — one about the park and the second about his death. Both stories carried his pictures; both so different in meaning. While in one picture he was seen working with his team in the park, the other story carried his mugshot, announcing his departure from the world. 

He will live on in each plant, tree and flower in the Environment Park.