NEW DELHI, July 12 -- One of the saddest pictures I've seen in recent times, is the back of a young girl in jeans, head bowed down, weeping over the sliced trunk of an axed tree, her arms holding it tight! That picture was worth a thousand words, because plans for a huge metro project in Mumbai, involving a shed for train cars, supposed to come up in the Aarey forest, was shelved because of that one pic.
One weeping girl over a fallen tree, and a forest saved!
But it seems easier to save trees than people, isn't it? Afterall, nobody walks up to a tree and asks, "Have you been converted into thinking you should use a manure used by those who saved you so you can grow better?"
And if the tree had a mouth, it would ask, "What's that got to ...