"The Felling of the Banyan Tree" Poem
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The Felling of the Banyan Tree focuses on a particular time in a family's history when a drastic decision has to be made by the father. This decision involves the demolition of houses on a hill and the cutting down of a huge tree which has stood for centuries in the same spot.
It is an autobiographical poem, being Dilip Chitre's exploration of a time when he was uprooted from Baroda to the city of what was then called Bombay, modern day Mumbai.
So the banyan tree is a metaphor for his life, for the family's upheaval.
And the man responsible for the move is none other than the father, representing all that is masculine, dominant, forward looking and destructive. Contrast this with the traditional knowledge of the grandmother, representing all that is feminine - the past, nurturing, religious and conservative.
This patriarchal versus matriarchal theme is central to the poem, the speaker appearing to favour the latter but is helpless to stop the inevitable momentum of progress, as applied by the father.
Dilip Chitre, a respected and versatile artist and film-maker, is known as one of India's most popular modern poets and writes in both English and Marathi. His work is featured in most serious Indian anthologies.
'I regard my poetry as essentially autobiographical and historical. It describes my engagement with persons and places, the progression of time, death, and loss, memory and perhaps a hope of liberation to which I cling.'
The Felling of the Banyan Tree was first published in his book Traveling In A Cage, 1980 and has since become a poem for study in many Indian schools and colleges.
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Answer:
'The banyan tree' is a metaphor for Poet Dilip Chitre's life, for the family's upheaval, when he was uprooted from Baroda to Bombay ( now Mumbai).
Explanation:
The poet says that his father asked all the tenants to leave their houses so that all the houses can be demolished. All the houses except the one in which the poet's lived with family and a banyan tree, which was considered sacred by their grandmother. In this process, all the trees were cut. Many sacred and medicinal trees are also included in it but cutting down the huge banyan tree, the one that stood so tall, whose roots were so deep here and there, was a big problem. Nevertheless, the poet's father had ordered to cut down the banyan tree as well. The tree was three times bigger than the poet's house. The circumference of his trunk was fifty feet. Its aerial roots, touching the ground, we're thirty feet long. So at first, all branches were cut. As a result, insects and birds began to leave the tree. Fifty men cut the thick trunk of the tree continuously. Everyone got to see the rings in the trunk of that tree, which were showing the age of the banyan tree as about two hundred years. Poet as well as others too saw this slaughter in terror and fascination. Poet forward expresses that soon thereafter he moved from Baroda to Bombay (now Mumbai), where there was no tree. If someone was there, it was only in the dream, in the hope of turning it into reality touching the ground that was being converted into concrete buildings.