Fruit Bearing Trees

I am a member of an association of alumni students of the graduation college from where I passed out. In our executive body forum we decided that every year we shall plant some trees in memory of our late president, who himself was a great nature lover and organised many tree plantation drives under his leadership.

Now the question came, which is the best place to do so? As we searched around premises of various organisations or societies, we also came across a question regarding the variety of trees we should plant. Our usual answer was that we would be interested in planting fruit bearing trees, like guavas, mangoes, jamun, lemon, pomegranate, etc. All these varieties grow well in the climate of our city Lucknow. We thought that this choice would be welcomed by most societies or organisations. But, we were surprised to hear that fruit bearing trees add to nuisance value in the area when people start plucking them for their own use, without the societies getting the direct benefit. Most of the bodies gave stress on planting decorative trees only.

We analyzed the situation ourselves. It was evident that we are living in a different world now. People do not want the trees to be planted for others. Gone are the days, when we thought that trees are planted by a generation for their subsequent generations to reap its benefit. Every penny we spend, we want to utilize its full value ourselves.

Finally, as a member of current world's society, we decided that both decorative and fruit bearing plants would be planted in the premises of a particular organization. It was not a matter of decorative plants versus fruit bearing plants; it was about the reasoning given behind not doing anything for other's interest. Today also people do nice things, but many of them do it for their own interests only.

Let us keep planting trees, tomorrow will definitely change. Even the attitudes will change.

Dr. Sunil Ji Garg