A guerrilla gardener working in secret creates a forest in Kolkata
Advocate Mantu Hait started out with a few saplings, and a determination to clear the garbage off a vacant Port Trust plot. The self-sustaining forest is now a haven for residents... and birds.
Mantu Hait, 45, from Kolkata, has been on a secret mission for 15 years. It involves a small patch of land, some botanical weapons, and quite a bit of subterfuge. The land is a vacant plot that sits between a canal and a railway track in southern Kolkata. This is where Hait does his guerrilla gardening
Worldwide, guerrilla gardening is the term used for do-gooders who plant and tend to greenery on urban plots they do not own or have a legitimate claim to. Usually, these are government plots; in rare cases, they’re private but neglected or abandoned.
In Kolkata, this Port Trust plot served as a play area in the 1990s, when Hait was a child. “It was like an unkempt meadow, with some big trees on the periphery,” he says. Slowly, garbage began to appear. By the late ’90s, the trees were gone.
“That broke my heart,” Hait says. “I wanted to do something good but I was just a college student with no money.”
By 2005, he was a practising advocate in an Alipore court and the plot was now driving him crazy. So Hait decided to just step up and act. “I spent Rs 100 on some saplings and started planting them. Some survived, some died. I continued doing this for a few years, with some positive results,” he says.
Hait then started volunteering with a local NGO called Prakriti Samsad (Organising for Nature) and they began to pitch in with material. Friends and family donated too. Another NGO, the Alipore Environmental Association, heard of his efforts and reached out. A few volunteers helped him clear out the garbage, one patch at a time.
“Over a year, I planted around 500 saplings, and I noticed that the saplings for big trees were doing really well. I did some research and learnt more about things like what to plant, and how close to plant them so that they could help sustain each other. That’s when I first heard the phrase guerrilla gardening and realised that was me!”
Over the past decade, mango, sheesham, plum, guava, tamarind and Asoka trees have come up on this 1-km-long strip.
“Right now, it looks like a forest. The trees need barely any maintenance — once a year four of my friends and I plant some seeds and saplings and clear out any garbage.”
Meanwhile, Hait has continued to write letters regularly to the Kolkata Port Trust, asking for permission to do clean-up and plantation drives on this land. “All my letters have gone unanswered. But there has been no objection either. And now there are birds and butterflies here now, mongooses and squirrels. People go there for morning walks.”
It’s like a tiny forest in a polluted, crowded part of the city. “Even if a tree falls, we don’t clear it away. We let the rotting tree gives birth to various types of mushrooms and support other life forms,” Hait says.
The patch of nature is prized by local residents. “Hait is doing an excellent job. This forest has changed the air,” says Pratik Maitra, 72, a retired architect. “The greenery here keeps the area cooler the rest of the city. I’ve lived here all my life but never saw so many varieties of birds as we see now. Sometimes people try to dump garbage or cut the trees. We conduct regular checks and tell them to leave the place alone.”