There is a temple and an attached garden in my residential colony in Chennai. In this garden there are 3 magnificent trees. One is a Banyan tree and the other two are Peepal trees (Sacred Fig, Ficus religiosa). Not only do they possess a majestic beauty by themselves but they create a mystical ambience of a temple hidden in a jungle. I have seen them as saplings and seen them survive torrential rains and the vandalism of brats like me. I visit and admire these trees each time I go home and even though I have done nothing to care for them, their towering growth fills me with pride.
In that very same garden I get to see an example of the futility of trying to convince a person who has an illusion of knowledge. While planting the Peepals the gardener "married" them off to Neem (Margosa, Azadirachta Indica) trees by planting a Peepal and a Neem side by side. I had tried telling him then that it would hamper the growth of both trees, but he would hear none of that. He knew what he was doing, following his folk tradition and how could that be wrong. Though the Neem isn't as big or tall a tree like the Banyan or the Peepal, it can grow to admirably large size if left to itself. But over here, the Neems have been outcompeted and crushed by the giant trees. In the fifteen or so years since they have been planted, the Neems should be looking like full grown trees. Instead, they look like they are some kind of disease afflicted branches of the Peepals. It is a little saddenning to see that the incorrigible side of people has turned what should have been a mighty independent entity in its own right into a stunted attachment to another.
