A poet and critic, a former academic has created a small private forest in the foothills of the Western Ghats, and is planning to rewild his ancestral estate
The first thing that strikes one is the pair of imposing black, wrought-iron gates at the entrance of the estate. As we stand looking at it with awe-struck admiration, the old watchman, portly and pot-bellied, attired in a veshti (and nothing else), hops out of the nearby watchman’s room (with all the agility his old limbs can command) and initiates the cumbersome process of opening the unwieldly gates, saying something in Tamil. But this is not Sun News Tamil, it is the autochthonous dialect. We fail to understand it word by word, the general import, however, is somewhat clear: the old man wants to convey to us that we are expected, and even more than that, that we are welcome. Meanwhile, our host spies us from his cottage deep inside the estate and comes rushing towards us in his quarter-a-century old (but beautifully-maintained) dark-blue Maruti 800. Our host is Dr. A. Raghu, who retired as Associate Professor of English from T.K.M. College of Arts and Science, Kollam, after 30 years of teaching. Prior to that, he had been a brilliant student, securing university ranks for his pre-degree, B.A., and M.A. examinations, and taking his Ph.D. from the Institute of English of the University of Kerala in record time.
He is also the author of seven books, including three collections of poems and a celebrated biography of Sir C.P. Ramaswami Ayar, published by Orient Blackswan, titled Duty, Destiny, and Glory: The Life of C.P. Ramaswami Aiyar. He runs the You Tube channel called Banyan Tree. He has now retired to his ancestral village of Erachakulam, near Nagercoil, to become a full-time agriculturist, and planter, and more importantly, to give shape to his personal paradise, a private forest. Our host seems to read our thoughts regarding the magnificent pair of gates. “My grandfather was a fan of everything British. These wrought-iron gates are modeled on the gates of Buckingham Palace, much smaller though they are,” he explains, laughing. We get into the old 800, and are smoothly driven to a cottage tucked into a small, lush forest. The sight is amazing, even surreal: a tiny slice of Amazon, or so it seems, in Nanjinad. It all started in 2005, when Dr. Raghu set about his lifelong dream of creating a small private forest. The saplings were carefully chosen. All were species native to Nanjinad. They were planted in a haphazard manner, as one would find in a natural forest. They were also planted close to one another to create a dense forest-like scenario. “My relatives advised me that if teak trees are planted closely, they will have no value when they are ultimately felled,” he tells us. “I replied that the teak trees will never ever be cut down. This is a forest, and not a plantation.” They had always been amused by outré ideas, now they thought they had received proof of my losing my marbles.”
The saga began in the 16th century when Raghu’s ancestors migrated from Kalakad, some 60 kilometres away, to the then godforsaken village of Erachakulam. The Erachakulam inscription of the 17th century, on the walls of the ancient Sivankovil in the village evidences that the settlement was under the rule of the Venad Kings, for it speaks of the king being in Kollam, and of a man travelling to Kollam to meet the ruler. The inscription, incidentally, is mentioned in Volume 7 of the Travancore Archaeological Series as well as in Volume 2 of T. K. Velu Pillai’s The Travancore State Manual. In the 18th century, the family experienced a rise which was as meteoric as it was unexpected. Marthanda Varma Raja was being chased by the hired would-be assassins of the ettuveetil pillamar. An ancestor hid the illustrious fugitive in a secret place among boulders atop a hillock. For a full day, the two men remained there, trembling and hardly daring to breathe, consuming nothing but the crystal-clear water of the spring on the top of the hillock, as the hitmen scoured the area. When night fell, the royal quarry fled through Kalliankad to Padmanabhapuram. “It was lucky that he was not eaten by a tiger, for the place was a tigers’ lair. Had it so happened, Kerala history would have been dramatically different,” chuckles Raghu. In 925 ME (1750 AD), after consolidating his power, out of gratitude, Marthanda Varma Raja granted a 1000-acre fiefdom to the ancestor. The records say janmam karamovizhe, which means that it was for perpetuity, and also that it was tax free. “Everything changed with Independence, and we now pay taxes like everyone else,” he explains. The boulders and the spring are even now part of the estate. And there were tigers in the estate as late as the 1960s. (However, there is a rather steamy counter-narrative, in all probability originating in some envious villagers, that Marthanda Varma granted the fieldom to the ancestor for arranging the service of a devadasi for the king.) In the centuries that followed, the fortunes of the family rode a wild roller coaster. There were dramatic expansions of the family wealth through strategic marital alliances and also spectacular destruction through internecine conflict and ruinous litigation. Now all that remains of the estate is what is in Raghu’s hands, and it is truncated, dismembered, and non-contiguous, a mere shadow of its original self. “My cousins are not interested in the estate,” Raghu enlightens me, “they want to lead quiet, peaceful lives; besides, most of them are abroad.”
Raghu takes us on a walk through the mini-forest. Most of the trees are native to the area: teak, rosewood, cheelanthi (poovarasu), punna, poomaruthu, kattumaruthu, pathimugam, veppu, panni vakai, nal vakai, konna, ezhilam pala, chempakam, palasham, Indian almond, dragon bamboo, palmyrah, banyan and peepal.
Raghu becomes excited when he speaks of the palasha tree, butea monosperma to give its botanical name. It is a keystone species, a species which defines the entire ecosystem and drives it. It offers food and shelter to numerous creatures. By planting a palasha sapling, you create a microecosystem around it. In fact, the Western Ghats would not be the Western Ghats but for the palasha tree. Every part of the palasha tree has its uses. It is an important ingredient in Ayurveda. For thousands of years, Indian civilization has looked upon the palasha tree as sacred. The opening sloka of the Shukla Yajurveda mentions it. The tree has a very special place in Indian literature and in Indian history: it is celebrated by innumerable poets and prose writers, including Rabindranath Tagore, and the historic battle of Plassey is actually the battle of Palasha.
The private forest is home to a marvelous variety of birds, animals, and reptiles. “When I planted the first sapling in 2005, there was not a single monkey. Now we have more than a hundred monkeys,” he says. As we talk, a pride of peacocks is strutting around us, rather unmindful of our presence. The star nocturnal players in the mini-forest are the wild boar and the porcupine. There are numerous varieties of snakes, including pythons. An important step taken by Raghu was the digging of a small kulam in the middle of the mini-forest. The pond which does not go dry even in the height of summer, acts as a perpetual magnet for the wild fauna. Though an amateur, Raghu has identified a dozen species of snakes that come to the pond to drink water, and they include the cobra, the viper, the king cobra, and the python.
What is the idea behind the private forest? “It is a childhood fantasy which has now been realised. I feel I am doing something for Mother Earth,” Raghu spells out. However, the journey to the creation of the miniature forest has not exactly been a bed of roses: “My neighbours think that I am downright crazy, for example, when I feed monkeys.” There have been problems with the owners of certain neighbouring properties who have cut off irrigation water supply to Raghu’s estate, and now summer is approaching. Raghu hopes to solve the dispute amicably, without legal entanglements. Besides, there are financial problems: “We have always been agriculturists cultivating rice and coconut. In the mid-twentieth century, we turned to rubber as well. Now, all three are doing, rather badly.”
‘But the problems have not deterred Raghu. He has drawn up a series of ambitious plans. These include the creation of a two-acre wetland to attract migratory birds, and the installing of a catena of cameras to record wildlife sightings in the estate. Raghu does not like the term “afforestation”: “Once upon a time, all this was dense forest, an extension of the forested slopes of the Western Ghats. So it is not afforestation, but reforestation.” The approach cannot afford to be laid laid-back, however. Whenever an invasive species is spotted, it is immediately removed. An ambitious rewilding project is on the cards. Rewilding is a rage in the West, but hardly spoken of in India. For starters, a ten-acre plot has been identified for the project. The idea is to put an end to all cultivation and hand over the landscape to nature, to regenerate the environment and recreate the ecological paradigm, woven richly with spectacular biodiversity, as it existed before the human hand devastated it. Drawing inspiration from the rewilding project of Knepp Castle in England, a step-by-step protocol is being formulated for returning the plot to nature, the first step being stopping all agricultural operations in it. The services of indigenous cattle and feral pigs will be utilized. Once the rewilding project is completed, and every single invasive species is rooted out, the area will become a self-regenerative ecosystem of ever-increasing biodiversity.
As we prepare to leave the estate, Raghu feels inspired to recite to us his poem, “Love Story.” The piece is about a very unusual love story, about the protagonist’s love not for a woman, but for his ancestral village. The poem concludes thus:
The tiny village from which my fathers came,
Surrounded by mountains,
On the banks of a stream,
Wrapped in the eternal mist of a dream.
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