Introducing an old resident of West Mambalam

A baobab tree at Thiruvengadam Street in Gokulam Colony, West Mambalam on October 1, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PRINCE FREDERICK

A baobab tree at Thiruvengadam Street in Gokulam Colony, West Mambalam on October 1, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
PRINCE FREDERICK

Some arrive at the right knowledge of the things around them without the handrails of instruction. Others, their intellectual feet slowed down by an ataxic gait, would need the steadying hand of an awareness drive to reach a space where they can engage with the environment around them in a manner that cherishes and protects it.

To see this idea crystallised into a tangible reality, let us visit an interior street in West Mambalam. A publicity-shy baobab hiding in Thiruvengadam Street in Gokulam Colony, West Mambalam has benefitted from a farsighted action volunteered by a household, one that stands by this tree in both literal and figurative terms. Their compound wall inlaid with decorative grey stone blocks “steps back” and allows breathing space for the baobab. A planter bed caressing the wall is discontinued to allow the tree freedom to express itself.

Where the wall takes a break, a perforated metal screen has been installed “deep in the crease”.

These measures suggest a keen understanding of a baobab’s potential for gaining girth. Baobabs being the Methusaleh of the avian world, known to live for a millennium if not more, the tree has all the time in the universe to grow up and big. Let us assume the trunk of this baobab has achieved its maximum girth — trees are not automatons, and those within a species display individual features shaped by environmental factors. A baobab at the Andhra Mahila Sabha campus in Adyar requires nearly two dozen pairs of hands to give it a bear hug. And a baobab on Pallavan Salai sports a trunk barely one-tenth the size of the one at Andhra Mahila Sabha. Even if the trunk has completed its growth plan, the setback provided will help the tree stretch its arms freely, pushing its branches into the air unhindered.

While this household has acted responsibly out of the knowledge they had about this tree, another entity has acted out of ignorance about the tree’s intrinsic value. They have turned the broad trunk of the baobab into a billboard. The word “puncture” with a mobile number accompanying it has been scrawled on the trunk.

T.D. Babu, tree conservationist, a member of Chennai District Green Committee and a Nizhal associate, brought this baobab’s existence to The Hindu Downtown’s notice. While commending this household’s initiative to help this Baobab, and by extension, the cause of tree conservation, he repeated his oft-expressed hope that the Forest Department expedites its project to place plaques next to heritage trees underlining their significance. One can lead themselves to believe that had a plaque been placed, the owner of this tyre repair shop would have refrained from daubing paint on the tree’s trunk. When this writer quizzed a couple of habitues of the street about the tree, it was obvious they were not on first name terms with it. They did not know its name, let alone its history and its rarity on local soil. The plaques being prepared by the Forest Department do not stop at elucidating upon a tree’s heritage value, but also issues a warning to anyone who acts in a manner that violates the rights of the tree to exist unhindered in the space it occupies.