Salil Chaturvedi

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Prava Rai Namchi, Sikkim My consciousness—the time when I became conscious of the world around me—was surrounded by trees. Rabong, the village in Western Sikkim where I grew up, was a very beautiful village; it still is, though it has grown now. There were streams, hills, meadows, and during spring […]

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Ravi Agarwal New Delhi My memory of my childhood is the memory of a tree. I remember sitting under a tree and trapping squirrels. The house I grew up in was a big Lutyen’s Delhi house. In the backyard there were these two mango trees. One was huge, about fifty

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Pradip Krishen While working on my book, The Jungle Trees of Central India, I was hopping from jungle to jungle trying to discover the trees there. During these trips I discovered a tree that I connected to instantly because of the smell of its flowers. I remembered the smell very

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Anita Pinto Mapusa, Bardez I’ve always been very fond of trees. Wherever I go I am constantly looking at trees more than flowers or houses. The earliest tree I remember is a mango tree from our neighbourhood. We lived in Mahim, Bombay, where there were cottages built during the East

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Amruta Patil Panjim I think the first tree that really stays in my memory was in Katari Bagh, Cochin. My father was serving in the Navy and we lived in a house with a lawn and trees outside. And as it is in Kerala, it was lush. Outside that house

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Vandana Shiva Dehradun My earliest tree memory is the Harshringar, which used to be my mother’s favourite; she had planted it. The flowers fall at night and in the morning, it is beautifully layered. We were in Lakhimpur Kheri, and that image of the flowers…even today when I see the

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Remi Gass Alsace, France The first tree I remember as unique in my memory was when I was very small. I must have been three-four years old. My parents would bring us on Sundays to make a little tour in the forest in Alsace. There was a little chapel there

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Rana Dasgupta Kent, England I grew up in England. I was born in Kent, a place of extreme natural beauty. In our garden we had a Cobnut tree. It’s not a very common tree, and some of my earliest memories are of these Cobnuts lying in our garden. My mother,

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Priya Kuriyan Cochin When I was eight years old, and my sister thirteen or fourteen, we used to spend our summer holidays in Ranchi, where my dad’s eldest brother was posted. We had three naughty cousins, two girls and a boy, who was the boy of the family, and was

Tree Memories by Salil Chaturvedi Arti Das Panjim Quite weirdly, one of my first tree memories is of a dying tree. I grew up in Panjim city, opposite the Fidalgo hotel. Ours was a ground-plus-one house and we stayed on the first floor. Behind that was an old traditional Goan house. There was a small