Raj the Banyan Tree
8 October 2023
This is the first in a two-part series. This fictional narrative is designed to serve as an allegory to philosophies that we will discuss in the next part.
This is a story about Raj, a 1000-year-old banyan tree. Raj is no ordinary tree. Well, Raj has a trunk. The trunk has branches that have leaves. Five major branches radiate outward from the main trunk. There’s perseverance in the north, exploration in the south, enlightenment in the west, prosperity in the east and unity in the northeast. Countless smaller branches spring out of these. They have their names, too. Journalists and politicians always have time for this stuff throughout history. And we have a lot of history.
Thus, Raj is ordinary in all aspects of being a tree but extraordinary in all aspects of being. You’d reckon Raj is the last living tree in the known universe. Raj lives in a climate-controlled dome, which might also be out of the ordinary, depending on when you read this. However, in Alia’s time, any habitable area in the solar system was built and maintained by us. Who are we? We are the architects of this story. We are the humans. We control the climate in Raj’s sanctuary, the Raj Rakhshak. We keep the engines that power the Rakshak dome running through our sweat and blood.
Alia thinks that description is an exaggeration. Quite a trivial portion of the tax paid by the working population is required for the maintenance of Raj Rakshak. And the people complain about that, too? I need to clarify; this story is also about a young girl called Alia who hates her neighbours. Her neighbours are stupid. Their parents immigrated from the Jovian moons. The Jovians have different brains because of all the weird gravity. Martians still had Terran roots. Thus, native Martians have a better sense of the importance of Raj Rakshak to their origin story. Without Raj, Mangalbharat would not be the first nation to establish a functional colony on Mars. However, the immigrants do not care about the toll paid by Alia’s ancestors. They are miserly beings who only care about the cess they pay for Raj’s survival. Alia hates her neighbours because they’d vote to kill Raj. They should not have a right to vote on such matters in the first place.
Alia is too young to understand that that is not how a universal adult franchise democracy works. And that is what Mangalbharat is, owing to its legacy as a spin-off of ancient India. And Alia is a nobody who lives in a generic residential sector of Mangalbharat. Most of us humans live here on Mars. It is easier than any other place in the solar system. We get heavy metals and minerals required for nuclear fuel from the asteroids, and Mars is closer than Earth in terms of fuel transport.
Alia hates her neighbours because they are apathetic towards Raj. She is sure of it. She has seen their Y profiles. They have boosted Yarns from the Frugal Party. The Frugal Party has, since its inception, felt the need to cut government spending to maintain Raj Rakhsahk. How much do they expect to save? Will the extra resources provide for more homes? No, the politicos would gobble the money into their personal estates. They wear a frugal mask to gain power, but they do not care about the advance of our civilisation. They say there is no use of Raj except for a symbolic display of wealth for the elite. That is an easy claim because the sanctuary is closed to public visitors. To visit Raj, to stand in Raj’s majestic shade, you either donate a large sum to the sanctuary, or you are the prime minister of Mangalbharat who takes their oath under shade. This is a terrible interpretation of facts from Alia’s neighbours. Visits to Raj Rakshak are limited due to logistical reasons. This has nothing to do with a class hierarchy.
For several years, people would visit Raj every week to touch its trunk, express gratitude, and gather Raj’s blessings. These were the early days of the bioprinting revolution. The revolution may as well be called a crisis. India was severely affected by climate volatility. There were droughts all over the country’s agricultural belt. Bengal was flooded. The country was helpless. However, not hopeless.
The Europeans had invented bioprinting. As a landmark for humanity, this was a miraculous leap. We did not need plants or trees or any other organic material. We could “print”, or manufacture them all from inorganic resources. We were no longer dependent on Earth to be our home base. The technology was guarded by borders, but India could purchase the product - bioprinted food. That was not an inexpensive option, so the Indians figured they could survive the calamity by bioprinting food domestically. They miscalculated the economics of the whole affair. Their technology could not achieve the efficacy of European printing in time. Their printers had lower produce per unit resource consumed and were slow enough to cause death and riots through deprivation.
Raj Rakhsak was a monument to the bioprinting revolution in India. Through half a century of geographical, political and social changes, the population came to be centred around the ancient capital of New Delhi. They built a home for Raj at the centre of their newfound civilisation. They worshipped Raj. The sanctuary was a public good open to all.
Shweta hated her neighbours, too. She lived through a time when they passed an ordinance requiring visit passes for Raj Rakshak. These were free at first. Their core purpose was to manage the crowd in the sanctuary. This had started to become an issue as the population boomed. Another quirk of our history contributed to this turn of events. People wanted their newborn children to experience Raj’s shade, if only briefly. Being shaded was now a ceremony. Shweta had been shaded by her grandmother when she was 2 years old. This was a relatively simple ceremony; you move the baby towards the tree, ensuring a sunlight-to-shade transition. But a tree, even a banyan tree, is a limited physical presence. Shweta hated her neighbours because they had voted to charge the public for visit passes. They were obtuse folks.
Unbeknownst to Shweta, there was politics at work. As such, a negligible portion of the government’s treasury was spent on maintaining the sanctuary. However, in absolute terms, the number looked significant to some folks. They did some math in their head and wondered if the whole affair was worth their money. Some folks did not care for Raj beyond its existence as a public monument. Did they care about the shading ceremony? Every municipal office had a more miniature inorganic replica, which you could use as a substitute for the hassle of visiting Raj.
For Shweta, the experience of getting shaded by Raj was worth the hassle and, later, worth every penny. When you entered the shade, a cool breeze with a heavenly smell would blow on your face. An information panel would tell you how your ancestors felt under a tree. The heavenly smell is called petrichor and is produced via moisture and dust. You could not touch the tree trunk, but you could purchase a leaf as a memoir. They said that the leaves are collected as Raj sheds them. Shweta did not believe them. The leaves were probably printed separately, but they are the same DNA as Raj, and they use the technology which forms the basis for Raj Rakhsak as a monument. Hence, they are worth it too. She purchased two with her kids’ names engraved on them.
Alia hates her neighbours. It is common practice to have a Rajpatta framed and preserved on the doorway of your home. Alia’s neighbours have a replica made of gold. They are stupid. They like to pay for an ornament but would not pay for what the ornament represents. Alia does not know that her ancestor, Shweta, has gone through her plight. Over centuries, governments would take back full responsibility for Raj Rakshak. Some have renovated the sanctuary and upgraded its infrastructure to appease their voters. Others came who washed this responsibility off their hands to appease their voters instead.
Alia’s grandmother, Swati, worked as a botanist in Raj Rakshak. She was the only person Alia knew who had visited Raj. You had to be important to get a chance to visit. There was hardly any population living on Earth, and interplanetary passenger ships were costly. Maintaining the atmosphere in space was quite a different game than controlling the atmosphere on a planet.
A decade ago, Swati was pulled out of retirement for a special mission. Raj was sick with a parasite. This was an unusual situation. No organic material that could harm Raj should have entered the dome in the first place. But the parasite had hollowed out the trunk, and several roots were rotten before it was discovered. Raj was a large banyan tree by now. This had to be fixed the old way. Bioprinting could give you a new tree, but replacing the trunk of a millennium banyan tree was impossible. Any mistakes would be seen as a disaster. The affair was kept a secret until Swati and her team found a cure without harming the tree. Swati passed away of natural causes on her way back to Mars.
Alia hates her neighbours. The neighbours do not know that Swati has given her soul to Raj. She would spend hours standing under Raj’s shade to relive her grandmother’s memory. Alia was not miraculously awarded access. She used a transferred reality module. Shweta would be elated if she could experience this. In Shweta’s time, transferred reality headsets could give you an audio-visual experience of another place. In comparison, modern headsets can manipulate electrical signals in our brains directly. The cool breeze and the petrichor can be experienced in the comfort of your home.
When Alia would turn 18, she would go through her shading ceremony. She would eat a roasted chilli, immediately followed by a spoonful of curd. This is quite different from the ceremony Shweta would remember. Perhaps that is the case because the experience of being in a tree’s shade is no longer an ordeal. Perhaps that is the case because ceremonies transform through time. Alia’s neighbours have voted for a more permanent outcome than the political cycles that came before. Raj would be replaced with an inorganic replica. The last living tree would be no more.
That is a lie. The story of Raj the banyan tree does not end. The replica is still called Raj, and why wouldn’t it be? When the next visitor touches the trunk, they will feel the surface is different. Will the programmers of transferred reality systems change provide a choice? You can experience the old Raj or the new Raj or a fluffy one made of cotton candy. When the children of Mangalbharat turn 18, will they no longer have a shading ceremony? We know the answers to these rhetorics because Raj was never the last living tree. Alia will grow up to forgive her neighbours. She will learn in school that Raj was merely the first bioprinted banyan tree.