This is the view from the third floor window in my mother’s duplex apartment in South Delhi. Of all the photographs I took during the month of March to capture the impact and experience of what felt like the sudden greening of New Delhi, this captures it best. Given that I was there right after winter was over, every road and every corner seemed to lush and green before the dust storms of the heat of the northern Indian summer covered it all up.
Urban forestation is galloping in India as Delhi seeks to solve the challenge of pollution with nature’s own tools. The Yamuna river is one of the most polluted and extensive programs are underway to change this. If there was one message I took away from my time in India this year, it was that the country was determined to address it environmental issues and the transformation was visible.
My father recalled that back in the 1940s there was only sparse tree growth and that too only thorn bushes rather than the lushness we saw all around us today. He was 9 years old when Mahatma Gandhi’s cortege wound its way through Delhi’s streets in 1947 and remembers it vividly even now. My mother, while a handful of years younger, said the same thing – back in the 1950s, 60s, and up until recently, Delhi had no leafy green trees, just thorn bushes. So this is not an attempt to plant back what was there so much as an attempt to provide a green lung to a desperately polluted city.
Here are a few more photographs from my trip to give you a sense of this novel forest experience.
