Heatwave arbour.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The Millennium City of Gurugram has rightfully earned its status as a land of high-rises. The same land may also be noted for its more traditional high-rises—the trees. Take the Amaltas tree standing on a traffic island in Sukhrali village. It is currently in a luscious summertime bloom. But there is a world beyond the eye-catching Amaltas. Here are three landmark trees of Old Gurugram, remarkable not for their beauty or blossoms, but for the relationship they have built over the years with us citizens.

Like a nakhlistan in registan, the peepal in the otherwise bleak and dusty Masjid Udyan makes its consoling presence felt as intensely as any desert oasis. The most generous source of shade in the Sadar Bazar park, it becomes an even more desirable destination during the sweltering summer afternoons, especially for citizens in the vicinity who are obliged to work outdoors. Per a veteran biscuit hawker operating beside the park, the peepal is “very old,” and that many labourers in the area approach the tree to seek “shanti” and “sakoon,” and to escape the heat. Indeed, very often men are seen lying sprawled atop the concrete chabutara raised around the tree’s wide trunk. (The marble plaque on the platform dates the park to 1975.) Some citizens exploit the tree as a makeshift table for their meal. An appropriate time to experience the peepal is the twilight hour, when the light is soft, and the air less laden with dust. It helps that a kebab stall is located just outside the park.

In Jacobpura, a towering neem’s leafy branches spreads out like a parasol over a pathway, turning it into a semi-dark arbour. Scores of men working nearby lounge under its shade whenever the opportunity permits. They tend to be labourers, cart pullers, rickshaw pullers, and courier delivery men. Once, during the summer of another year, a man, dressed like a salesman (pants, full-sleeve shirt, tie), was seen napping under the tree; his laptop bag doubling up as pillow. Despite being too close to the chaos of Sadar Bazar, the space under the tree exudes calmly quietude.

On the Gurudwara Road pave, close to Kamla Nehru Park, stands an extraordinary tree. It is a combination of three trees—neem, bargad and peepal. The peepal and bargad leaves are seamlessly entwined with the foliage of neem. The neem leaves being the most dominant. Some people in the surroundings call it Triveni, traditionally the place where three rivers meet.

PS: The photo of the flowering Amaltas is the one at Sukhrali village, but from another summer.