For years, they dug into the bowels of a dense forest looking for stones. When quarrying hit the rock bottom in the early 70s, it was banned. But by then the destruction of this beautiful forest called Manpada was near complete.
When the extent of the tragedy dawned on the forest department, they went on a green frenzy. And instead of planting the indigenous trees that were destroyed, imported trees were randomly planted. The simplistic logic was: ’A tree is a tree is a tree’. So acacia and gliricidia from Australia, English tamarind from the United States, and gulmohar (yes, this beautiful tree with a beautiful Indian name is actually an import) from Madagascar were planted arbitrarily across the forest.
The problem with these trees was that they guzzled too much water, thereby reducing the ground water level. And the other problem was that they also spread uncontrollably. Along with these foreigners, came certain weeds that too spread like green cancer. Candy floss, Mexican poppy and lantana: each one of which systematically wiped out the local plants. In fact, lantana is a great threat to local vegetation because of its strange habit of secreting toxic chemicals from the roots that destroy any sapling that tries to grow near it.
Soon the colonialisation of the forest was complete. When local conservationists protested, a few saplings of subabool, bamboo, Indian rosewood, bauhinia, khair and an interesting tree called monkey biscuit tree were planted in small numbers. (The latter is called so because monkeys relish its seeds that are shaped like biscuits.) And slowly the Indian trees started taking on the might of the foreigners.
Hearing these forest tales from Kaustubh Bhagat of BNHS, we started our trek from the eastern gate of Sanjay Gandhi National Park where Manpada is located. It is a part of the Yeoor Range in Thane, and adjoins the beautiful open-air butterfly park called Ovalekarwadi.
The first sighting was the Quarry Lake. It was a lake formed in the bowel of a large deserted quarry. But it looked beautiful with egrets, kingfishers and herons waiting at the water’s edge for their catch of the day. It was like a blue balm applied on a brown wound.
Then we witnessed three types of predatory hunting. Very close to the lake was a khair tree and we spotted a shikhra lying in wait for its prey. Unlike the big raptors like kites and eagles, they are small in build with smaller wings. So they don’t swoop down from the skies on spotting a prey. They wait, perched on the lower branches of a tree, and pounce on an unsuspecting prey from close quarters.
The strategy of the palm swifts was very unique. They flew about in the sky in unpredictable paths, holding their mouths wide open. And their prey, which are essentially small insects, would simply enter their gaping mouths and get stuck on their slimy sides.
On the other hand, the bee-eaters would sit facing the sun, and once the wings of their prey got lit up by the sun, they would chase them and catch them acrobatically in mid air. A bee-eater flew alongside as we trekked, and demonstrated in front of us her mastery in aerial combat.
Different wings, different strategies. Mother Nature has worked it all out in the minutest detail.
Soon we came across a patch of bamboo grove. The interesting thing about bamboo is that they live up to sixty years; and then they all flower and die. In this patch, all the bamboos had died of old age, all at once, and tiny saplings were slowly taking their place in the forest sun.
The forest floor was teeming with life. As Dr. Rahmani of BNHS says, that is where you will find myriads of life forms. And looking for bigger wildlife, we end up missing the floor for the forest. Right in front of us was a butterfly called peacock pansy. This beautiful creature had four eyes on its wings to make it look so diabolic that predators are warded off.
There was a slender snake slithering into the dry leaves. It was called the slender coral snake, and had a distinct black head. A peculiarity about this snake is that, though extremely poisonous, it has a mouth that opens just a wee bit. So it can’t bite off more than it can chew. Such is the profound balance of Nature.
Looking back at the forest, I realized that it looks more like a garden and less like a forest because of the dominance of imported flowering trees. And I realized that once a forest is destroyed, it is impossible to bring it back to its original glory. Because you can only plant trees, you can’t plant the intricately balanced forest floor with its myriad life forms that has taken so many millennia to evolve. And all attempts at afforestation merely become a patchwork done on a tapestry that’s lost forever.
