January 11, 2025

Trees Helping Trees

“Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.” This Sanskrit phrase means “The world is one family.” More on that later.
Today we parked on a dirt road in the outskirts of Tamakuru, a smaller town to the Northwest of Bengaluru, and trekked our way through what seemed to me like a jungle. We were visiting the Ghandhian School of Natural Farming, but I wasn’t sure how there could be a school out here. We passed flowering hibiscus, green peppercorn, and dogs sleeping in the sun, and eventually found ourselves in a long building in what felt like the middle of the forest. We were introduced to Manjunath, who is one of the people who help run this “school.” He made a quick introduction, and invited us on a tour.
Under the shade of palm trees, he explained how the farm worked. This half of the farm was an area that fostered an abundance of trees and ground cover native to the area, irrigated by a series of troughs filled with coconut husks. Manjunath explained that this area was designed to cater to pollinators, birds, and small reptiles. The Ghandhian school of Natural Farming had only started this effort about 8 years ago, but sure enough I could see the proof of their success in the variety of butterflies that flew by and the chirps of birds overhead.
Next, he led us to a new area and asked us to observe what was different about it. Someone made a comment about the different canopy heights, to which he launched into a passionate explanation about how this section of the farm worked. In this area, there were a variety of different trees being planted, each of them needing a different level of sunlight to survive. The coconut trees provided shade to the cocoa trees, which provided shade to the coffee trees, which provided shade to banana plants. The whole scheme created a system in which each tree got the right level of shade it needed to be productive. In addition, the root systems of the different trees extended to different depths, which meant that the deeper root systems were basically drawing up nutrients to be used by the shallower root systems. In a sense, all of the trees were helping each other out while helping themselves out too.
This brings me back to ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.’ Even though a whole explanation would be much too long for just one blog post, the gist of it is that, despite having different talents, desires, physical attributes, religions, ect., humans are meant to care for one another and treat every person with respect. In doing this, we are fulfilling the most natural desire of humankind, which is to help others. Just like the trees helped each other even though they had completely different physical attributes, I think we can take a page from their book and use our unique talents to help others. And, in doing so, we might just help ourselves too.

By
Amelia