Dead tree’s society.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

It was a dead tree, even as its woody remains stood upright at Lodhi Garden for very many years. And now, it is truly dead. Fallen; of its own volition on Saturday. The death of the tree was first told to The Delhi Walla by bookseller Abhinav Bamhi, and then by Kavita Joshi Rai, the founder of Instagram handle @dogs_of_lodhi, aka Dogs of Lodhi Garden. “Our beautiful iconic tree,” she says.

Nobody knew which tree it was. The tree would remain leafless throughout the year. Its bare branches would loom up into the air like the wailing limbs of a person in perpetual mourning. On winter weekends, the garden would be crowded with picnickers lounging all around the tree. But at the top might sit a solitary bird. The first instinct then would be take out mobile from the pocket and click on the camera button. Indeed, the tree was so picturesque that it has perhaps been snapped a million times. Its location was perfect. It stood facing one of Lodhi Garden’s many ruins. Sheesh Gumbad’s dome was originally embellished with blue enamelled tiles; hence its name meaning ‘glazed dome’. In the evening, after the sun dips behinds the monument, the Gumbad’s round dome grows into a blackness darker than the looming night. The tree then appears like the monument’s true soulmate.

Sometimes during a rainy day, a squirrel might be seem perched on the tree’s lower branch, its tail glowing from a drizzle, as though pearls were placed on it. On higher branches, a handful of birds might sit motionless like sculpted figures, looking very solemn, as though attending a council of Loya Jirga elders.

There would always be a green bench placed under the leafless tree. Decades ago, novelist Anita Desai famously posed for a photograph on this bench. One morning, some years ago, writer Annie Ernaux, visiting our city from France, sat under the dead tree to pose for The Delhi Walla’s camera.

Every evening without fail, the sky above the Lodhi Garden gets full of birds, flying in all directions. As late as three days ago, some of those birds would inevitably land on the tree’s limbs, perhaps to rest their own limbs.

This Sunday evening, no bird is landing on the tree. It seems that the Lodhi Garden loungers have already accepted the loss, and have moved on too. A boy is sitting atop the fallen trunk, posing for a photo; a couple is taking a selfie with the fallen tree as the backdrop. And two boys are playing badminton just beside the tree. Life goes on.

Rest in peace

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