Not in the distant past a tree was one of the things our farmer loved and cherished most. It carried for him and the community he was a part of a hallowed aura that made it something not to be trifled with, something as good as sacred. The sense of its being sacred no doubt was rooted in its immense usefulness for the farmer as well for all the people around. The tree was the stuff of myths and at times itself a myth as it seemed to symbolise the fertility of the earth and mystery of growth. While keeping its umbilical cord with the earth intact, it embodied an irresistible desire to go up and up. Its gradual spread expressed the horizontal expanse of life and ever increasing height hinted at the vertical vitality. The tree was a kind of an imperceptibly moving colourful line that never ceased in its intrinsically driven effort to connect the earth with sky, here with beyond and depth with height.

Male children and adolescents in our countryside could never figure out why they were sternly instructed by their elders never to pee under a tree. If a child violated the space, it would take its revenge: demons living in the tree would relentlessly haunt him. The thought of being haunted by demons was such a dread for a child that he would never think of doing anything messy under or close to a tree. Fear of an invisible demonic presence would prevent the young from defiling the environs surrounding the trees. The stories of demons the farmers scared the young with weren’t a blatant lie because they, to an extent, believed what they said because this was exactly what had been transmitted to them by their forefathers. Strangely the demons never disturbed their neighbours, the birds whose abode were the treetops. And flocks of birds invariably cheered the toiling farmers with their singing and fluttering.

We in the Punjab have inclement weather for at least six months; hot and humid. The tree used to be an easily accessible shelter against the sizzling hot summer sun and post-monsoon mugginess for the farmer working in the fields around the year. How he could sit there to have respite if it stank of urine. In the of absence of a legal regime regarding trees myth yields itself to be employed as a sociocultural force in evolving a much required norm that regulates human behaviour in the midst of nourishing chaos of natural life.

Not just the tree but it’s cool shade is also used as a symbol, metaphor or a simile in our literature and social life. You daily come across an adage written at the back of lorries and auto rickshaws “maavan thandian chhawan (mothers are the cool shade)”. Baba Farid who chose the bliss of poverty and austerity compared the patience of ascetics with the “the endurance of the trees” which weather all the weathers, clement and harsh. So in the lore and classics the tree stands majestically generous with its quality of endurance.

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The tree is not all about shade and shelter which are by no means unimportant in the agrarian society. It also offers something that delights one’s palate, the fruit. We find the best of wholesome food in fruits. In Mahabharata, Punjab has been called the land blessed with Pilu-forests. Pilu (tree) bears eponymous fruit that is delicate and juicy celebrated in one of his lyrics by Khawaja Ghulam Farid that delineates the hauntingly charming beauty of Pilu and female Pilu pickers. The soil of Punjab sports a wide variety of fruit-trees which enrich both physical landscape and economy.

Pruning the trees provided the farmers and the community with the firewood making it possible for the smoke to rise from their homes without which they would be cheerless. Aged felled trees provided the wood for making agricultural implements and furniture. The tree has been a ubiquitous presence in agrarian society: cool leafy shelter, a log fire in the hearth, wood roofs, ox-drawn ploughs, stools and cots.

But the landscape has already changed beyond recognition due to aggressive and deep penetration of capitalist market forces into agricultural sector. Everything now a farmer is invisibly forced to produce or grow through seductive coercion is meant for the sale that fetches cash which consequently boosts consumption. So tree is now little more than a pale shadow of its previous self. Stripped of its entire mythical ambiance the tree is no more than merely a tree; a piece of wood coming out of soil. It’s seen as an object which is fodder for some factory hidden somewhere. The tree has sadly lost its power to create a tactile sensation, the sense of intimacy and mysterious connectedness with humans, animals, birds, insects, air and environments through its absent presence. In our cultural history, the trees provided the lovers with moments of intimacy and witnessed the lovers being murdered under their shade. They have always sheltered those who can’t find shelter anywhere else.

We live in an age when trees are murdered. There was a time when trees were not only loved and but also invoked as celestial judges. Remember Sahiban, the legendary rebel? While fleeing with Mirza, she requests the Jand tree of Sandal Bar forest to hear her case and judge whether she committed a crime by opting for elopement. Farmer’s historical relationship with trees is captured by Hindko poet Barda Peshawari when he says: “My task is to grow trees and take care of them / the lucky ones will savour their fruit when it ripens”. Unlike Barda, Punjab’s farmers are forced by conditions to cut trees the moment they are ready to be sold as a useable logs and, pick and pack the fruit for the market the moment it seems to be eatable, ripened or not.