The tree man bids adieu, leaving a legacy behind

M. A. Siraj

He conducted Lalbagh walks in Bengaluru for over a decade taking nearly 3,500 nature lovers across the 250-year old garden Nature enthusiast and a friend since long, V. R. Thiruvady bid this mortal world adieu on August 1.

Only four days ago (on July 27) he sent me a post on the whatsapp attaching the image of a typewritten letter by nuclear scientist Albert Einstein on the letterhead of Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists based at Princeton, New Jersey.

Dated April 30, 1947, it was addressed to noted scientist Dr. K. S. Krishnan, grandfather of Thiruvady who lived in Delhi, a stone throw away from where Prime Minister Nehru lived.

Einstein headed the Committee as its chairman.

The Committee had sought monetary help to raise a fund of a million dollars for taking up the task of conducting awareness against the misuse of atomic energy and to secure the destiny of human beings against “the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man’s discovery of fire”.

A note from Thiruvady said: “I have finally gifted my family archives to NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences) in Bengaluru.”

He further said, “This letter is topical in the light of the release of the movie Oppenheimer”.

Little did I realise that it would be the last post from a friend whom I knew since 2006 when I joined him on his weekend Lalbagh Walk. But more importantly, I wonder if the act of passing on the letter and great many other such documents to the NCBS archives had anything to do with premonitions about mortality.

Thiruvady, born into an illustrious Tamil-speaking family, grew up in Delhi, studied at St. Stephen’s College, obtained a degree in architecture from Ahmedabad and worked with several companies in Mumbai and Pune.

Worthies such as Arun Shourie and Mani Shankar Aiyer were either his classmates or batchmates. Though not trained as a botanist, he developed a lifelong love affair with trees.

Having settled in Bengaluru, he conceived and conducted Lal Bagh walks for over a decade taking nearly 3,500 nature lovers across the 250-year old garden which he would refer as the great repository of the green heritage of the Deccan Plateau.

Among those joining him on different occasions were American journalist Thomas Friedman and famous ceramicist Kate Malone.

As members of the Bangalore Environment Trust (BET) both of us would share a lot at monthly meetings that were held regularly till Covid-19 paralysed the world.

He authored the most authoritative book Lalbagh: Sultan’s Garden to Public Park in 2020 digging through archives in Karnataka, East India Company papers at the India Office Library, London, correspondence with Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, and the Government of Karnataka Archives.

The book was an instant hit as previous works on the iconic garden had merely touched peripheral topics such as Glass House or G. H. Krumbiegel, the famed German superintendent of the botanic garden with the longest tenure.

The book on Lal Bagh carrying as many as 103 colour plates, illustrations, and paintings by Maratta artist commissioned by Cleghorn, a Scottish conservationist (appointed the horticulture advisor in 1856) was an instant hit.

Prior to this, he had come up with other books such as Heritage Trees and Devarakadus and Gundutopus. Thiruvady became my reference point on trees and gardens.

He knew trees, their origin, terrain in which they grew and the season in which they thrived and benefits accruing to the humans and animals.

His knowledge about the colour, texture, age, size of the trees and uses, of their bark, fruits and flowers was phenomenal and would be related with juicy sidelights from mythology and history in a fashion a raconteur would do.

He did several videos with Arun Pai, the founder of the Bangalore Walks under the title ‘Treespotting’ in gardens and on sidewalks of the city.

In his death, the city has lost a highly knowledgeable expert of the city’s formidable green heritage.