J&K Floods stain tree of colours, If ethereal beauty and a sense of eternity are mark of the “paradise” that Kashmir is, their most visible symbol must surely be the chinar tree with its wispy, blazing canopy. To tourist, many colours of its leaves — switching from deep green to slightly reddish, then to crimson and on to yellow before they fall — are the perfect foil to the brooding snow-white peaks in background. And its sheer size and stoutness, not to speak of its ability to withstand nature’s whims over centuries, feeds the chinar’s aura of invincibility. But this month’s floods have shaken the seemingly unshakeable. The rushing waters uprooted five chinars, said to be centuries old, in Srinagar and submerged the trunks of many others for weeks. “In areas still under water, the chinars will die because of a lack of oxygen supply to their shallow roots,” said Sunil Mishri, director of floriculture in Kashmir. One chinar each has fallen in the city’s Pratab Park, Rajbagh, Batamallo, Sonwar and Shalimar areas, said poet and environment activist Zareef Ahmad Zareef, the man behind the Save Chinar Campaign in the Valley. “The loss of human lives and the devastation are painful; but the fallen chinars too are a great loss to our heritage,” he said. It takes a chinar around 200 years to grow to its full size, which can mean a height of up to 25 metres and a girth well over 50 feet. Chattergam village in Budgam district is believed to be home to the world’s oldest living chinar, said to have been planted by Sufi saint Syed Abul Qasim Shah Hamdani in 1374. It is 14.78m tall and has a circumference of 60ft. The chinar, however, is fighting a losing battle for survival because of reckless felling, despite a ban, for development projects. An official report in 1970 had put their number at 42,000 across the Valley; a floriculture department survey in 2007 counted 38,401. A 2007 book by Mohammad Sultan Wadoo, former chief conservator of forests, however, put their number at just 17,124. Zareef argued that a government that “did so little to save lives and properties” could hardly be expected to be “interested in saving chinars”. “My worry is that unscrupulous officials will now declare many chinars unsafe so that they can be felled (and sold),” he said. The floods have wrecked many gardens and parks in the Valley, including parts of Srinagar’s Shalimar Bagh and Emporium Garden and the Achabal Garden in south Kashmir. Emperor Jehangir’s wife Nur Jahan had got the Achabal Garden built in 1620 around an ancient spring, “whose water has been overflowing the past three weeks, extensively damaging the front lawns,” said the floriculture officer, south Kashmir, Sheikh Shabir Ahmad. He said the Padshahi Bagh in Bijebehara, too, had suffered but all its chinars, including one with a girth of 70ft and considered one of the Valley’s oldest, were safe. “The garden was submerged for only two days,” he explained. Mishri said the full extent of the damage to chinars and other vegetation could be assessed only after the water receded completely.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 10:30:01 +0000
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