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| A nest atop the Champaka tree |
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| Champaka tree in the morning. |
- Brian Mendonca
There are few things that give greater joy than being close to nature. Yesterday I was walking out of the sports complex at Campal, and a Champa blossom fell on me.
Surprised, I looked up and saw a glorious Champa tree in full bloom. The ground below it was scattered with flowers, as if attesting to its munificence.
The intoxicating fragrance of the flower made my day. I look forward to seeing it as it welcomes me as I go to the swimming pool nearby.
Today I took the two photos above. In the place I live there are also Champaka trees. So I feel a sense of home.
The Sanskrit medieval woman poet Vijja (8th or 9th century), portrays the necessity of conservation of plants and trees, describing the miserable condition of a campaka tree – a tree of the magnolia family, michelia champaka – that has been neglected by a farmer who is ignorant of its real worth. In another poem, she sketches images of an unnamed tree that provides cool shade and bears sweet fruit:
Kenapi Campaka-taro bata ropito’si
Ku-grama-pamara-janantika-vatikayam.
Yatra pravriddha-nava-saka-vivriddha-lobhad
Bho bhagna vata-ghatanocita-pallavo’si (Parab 1991: 249) (Verse 67).
[Oh, champaka tree! You have been planted by someone in a garden near the home of a wicked wretch, living in a miserable village, where through his greed for the more luxuriant growth of wild plants, your foliage has been reduced to such a condition as to resemble a house in ruins.] (Translation in Chaudhuri 1939: 110).
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Photos taken by Brian Mendonca at swimming pool area, Campal Sports Complex, Goa on 20 November 2024. Reference to Vijja from essay titled, 'Some Women Writers and their Work in Classical Sanskrit Literature: A Reinterpretation' by Supriya Banik Pal in Asian Literary Voices edited by Philip Williams and published by University of Amsterdam Press. Available in Ithaca journal. 2010. (Open Access). Updated 21/11/24.
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