Can Delhi’s heritage trees be saved?

Like an ancient elephant condemned to lie forever still, its body in one structure, its trunk reaching out past the walls of others, this oddly twisted tree in Chhata Madan in old Delhi adds to the drama of life in the tiny lanes. People bustle around the temple there, the peepal tree alone remains frozen, its base now a part of a temple. One wonders then: what came first, the tree or the houses?

This peculiar remnant of a non-urban past is one of 24 trees in Chandni Chowk area that Delhi High Court has ordered preserved. The presence of these old trees only came to light recently after a Nai Sadak resident Nitin Gupta complained to the court that unauthorised construction was damaging a banyan tree. During the course of the litigation, the court learnt of two dozen trees that vie with humans for living space, often sharing the same territory.