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Soil. Air. Protection. Water. Time. As we reached the crest of the hill, he pointed to the recently dug (with the help of a little dynamite) pond and the pugmarks from the night before. The farmer who sheltered his cow nearby, now had water to sustain his animals and a predator to threaten them. The circle of life was forming again on what around it is a barren wasteland. It was not always so, this was a thriving forest ecosystem near the village of Vetale (Shree Vetaleshwar is a warrior form of Lord Shiva) on a hillside about 65 socially distanced kilometers from Poona (now Pune) at the time of Indian Independence. Sequential depredation had shorn it of its timber and the flora (and with it the fauna) and the rains took away its topsoil. Subsequent uncontrolled annual burning for cattle grazing ensures that nothing here grows or endures. It is a black, ashen and post-apocalyptic landscape as far as the eye can see. The nursery at 14 Trees is an oasis in this desert of despair. The ladies come down from their village halfway up the hillside and toil all day potting the saplings of local trees. Amba (Mango). Limbu (Lime). Narangi (Orange). Dudhya Bhoplaa (Bottle Gourd). Lunch is what grows here, prepared by the family that lives near the entry gate. Shelter is a pucca mud hut and for the more adventurous a newly constructed bamboo machan. The stream that runs rapid in the rains has been diverted to collect the water in ponds to provide year-round supply. In this effort does life begin its tenuous attempt at returning to its primordial home. We climb up the hillside the next day to another piece of land that has been discontinuously acquired from owners willing to sell, usually brothers who inherited it in pieces that no longer add up to the whole it was under the unifying father. The laborers have been busy digging holes to receive various saplings. I stick my hands into the soil and saying for each a prayer plant and do the initial watering of six trees. Past loved ones, now lost. Future hopes, full of potential. Current friends, such as they are! The trees are protected either by a bamboo frame if on open land or roadside or by the fencing such as of this plot of land. Each tree has a blue sign indicating the name of variety and the name of the person associated with it. Visiting cemeteries like Pere Lachaise, Highgate and Novodevichy is an abiding interest of mine, to see the last resting places of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx and Chekov. Here was a row of names like those, only here was not death but life. Not cold, shrinking and decaying but warm, growing and enduring. The saplings of the first year did not make it. The second last piece – water. The ponds that have been dug and blasted in the rock now provide a constant source. Now all it needs is time. On this hillside this morning, far from the madding crowd, the air is clean and clear and time seems to be in plenty. The plans allocate different plots for alumni of IIT Kanpur. A tree for every degree granted by that august institution which still houses our best memories. The 1990 batch has piece of prime real estate demarcated for it. Do we group them professionally by department, or personally by halls and wings? Whose tree will be next to mine? I have instructed my heirs that when in time I shed this mortal coil, my ashes are to be scattered around the tree with my name. I can then hope to spend the rest of eternity on a Sahyadri hillside watching our trees grow in the company of my best friends. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih