A secret forest in Kolkata
Mantu Hait, 45, has been on a secret mission for 15 years. It involves a small patch of land, some botanical weapons, and quite a bit of subterfuge. The land is a vacant plot that sits between a canal and a railway track in southern Kolkata. This is where Hait does his guerrilla gardening. Worldwide, guerrilla gardening is the term used for do-gooders who plant and tend to greenery on urban plots they do not own or have a legitimate claim to. Usually, these are government plots; in rare cases, they’re private but neglected or abandoned. In Kolkata, this Port Trust plot served as a play area in the 1990s, when Hait was a child. “It was like an unkempt meadow, with some big trees,” he says. Slowly, garbage began to appear. By the late ’90s, the trees were gone. “That broke my heart. I wanted to do something good but I was just a college student then, with no money.” By 2005, Hait was a practising advocate in an Alipore court and the plot was now driving him crazy. So he decided to act. “I spent Rs 100 on some saplings and started planting them. Some survived, some died. I continued this for a few years,” he says.
Hait was also volunteering with a local NGO called Prakriti Samsad (Organising for Nature) and they began to pitch in with material. Friends and family donated too. The NGO Alipore Environmental Association, heard of him and reached out. A few volunteers helped him clear out the garbage, one patch at a time. “Over a year, I planted around 500 saplings. I did some research and learnt more about things like how close to plant things so that they could help sustain each other. That’s when I first heard the phrase guerrilla gardening and realised that was me!”
Over the past decade, mango, sheesham, plum, guava, tamarind and Asoka trees have come up on this 1-km-long strip.
“Right now, it looks like a forest. The trees need barely any maintenance — once a year some friends and I plant some seeds and saplings and clear out any garbage.”
Meanwhile, Hait has continued to write letters regularly to the Kolkata Port Trust, asking for permission to do clean-up and plantation drives on this land. “All my letters have gone unanswered. But there has been no objection either. And now there are birds and butterflies here now, mongooses and squirrels. People go there for morning walks,” he says.
The patch of nature is prized by local residents. “Hait’s forest has changed the air,” says Pratik Maitra, 72, a retired architect. “And it’s brought so many birds.”