Talking Location With…Maithreyi Karnoor – the Baobabs of Savanur, KARNATAKA

9th May 2023

#TalkingLocationWith…. Maithreyi Karnoor, author of Sylvia -The Miracle Baobabs of Savur, KARNATAKA, South India.

The silhouettes of three giant trees loomed on the edge of distance. The flat earth of central Karnataka made the horizon a deceptive idea – it was hard to tell if something was a mile away or a mere meter. Summer comes early to this part of the world and stays long. Dry heat is as much a part of our lives as the culinary heat of red chilies that we consume in every meal. My mother and I had been on the road for close to an hour with the car’s air-conditioning on full blast in search of the mysterious baobabs of Savanur. We had driven through a landscape of red laterite soil which offered little more than shimmering fata morgana for a viewing experience – the monotony was only broken once by the sight of road workers trying to revive with water a mule suffering from sun stroke (we stopped to ask if we could help, but we were told there wasn’t anything we could do).

Two years ago, my parents had moved a couple of districts from my childhood home to a village where they bought a ten-acre mango orchard and settled into a quiet farm life. I was visiting them in their new home when a neighbour farmer who had dropped in to chew the fat spoke animatedly about these magical ‘tamarind’ trees of Sanavur – a town 36km away from the village. The trees were known to be around 1,800 years old and looked like no other tree in our part of the world. A quick Google search showed that they were Baobab trees, native to Africa. It was a wondrous feeling to know that these trees grew so close to us, they were practically in our backyard. A few days later, my mother and I had set out to see them.

Savanur falls in the Haveri district of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Roughly in the middle of this 750 km long and 400 km wide bean-shaped state, the Haveri district has the more wooded and lusher Uttar Kannada and Shimoga districts on its western and southern borders that are part of the famous Western Ghats. But Haveri itself is arid and flat. Perhaps that is why the Boabab felt at home here. All information about how these trees happened to be there is speculation. They have clearly outlived the collective memory of the people of that region.

The trees grew clearer and bigger as our car swung off the highway and onto the dirt track leading up to them. A stone wall with an iron gate protected these trees. A board beside the gate called them Kalpavriksha (Sanskrit for ‘wish-fulfilling tree’) and Dodda Hunasemara (Kannada for ‘large tamarind tree’). Their etymology is anybody’s guess – the tree was unknown to this region and with the person or people who brought being long dead, the locals simply gave it a name they knew. Perhaps owing to its sour fruit or its ability to grow and thrive in thirsty climes, ‘tamarind’ was what it became. And it was much bigger than the real tamarind, so (wait for it) it was called ‘large’ to distinguish it from the ordinary tamarind. Magic is a big part of our reality and as a society, we love associating miracles with anything even mildly mysterious. Hence the tag of the wish-fulfiller was a low hanging fruit for a tree known to have been alive through most of documented history.

As is the norm in sacred precincts in India, we were asked to take our shoes off as a mark of respect as we approached the trees. The priest of the small Lingayat temple at the base of the tree was also the tree’s caretaker. I’m myself irreligious but I understand how attaching divinity to things ensures its protection and sustenance. It is perhaps because they were worshipped that these amazing trees were spared the axe in all the centuries they have lived.

Standing under them was a truly humbling and overwhelming experience. With giant swollen trunks and gnarled branches clawing the skies they had stood there defying time and memory until questions were relegated to the realm of futility and all reality culminated in the simple act of being. It was magical and poetic sharing that moment and that space with these magnificent beings.

The tree’s rare and precious fruit was for sale in the temple. The priest blessed it and gave it to us with a warning to never place it on the ground and to never let water touch it. We were asked to pray to it with pure hearts for all our wishes to come true. Mum and I exchanged glances as we paid the 650 rupees (£6.40) for the fruit and walked back to our car. Praying to it was the last thing on our minds.

Back home, we pored over the internet together to research the process of its germination and growth. We found out that the baobab is known to have a very low rate of germination and very few of the saplings were known to grow up to be trees. We talked excitedly about planting a tree that would outlive us both and perhaps hundreds more generations after us. We gazed into the distance at the thought of everything such a possibility entailed. We soaked the seeds in water and waited and waited. The seeds did not sprout.

But the seed of a story that was planted in my mind by this momentous journey did germinate. As I wrote and wrote, it gathered momentum and branched into further stories about the land and its people, it drew words to itself and poetry and anecdotes and events and hopes and fears and triumphs and failings, and it took root in the pages of my notebook. And it became my debut work, Sylvia.

Perhaps, it is a wish fulfilling tree after all.

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Sylvia by award-winning translator and author Maithreyi Karnoor, is a story infused with themes of women’s lived realities, Indian mythology, motherhood and mental health.

Author Bio

Maithreyi Karnoor is a poet, award-winning translator, and a Charles Wallace Fellow at the University of Wales. Karnoor is passionate about decolonising literature and addressing the near-invisibility of South Indian narratives. She has been shortlisted for The Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and is a two-time finalist for The Montreal International Poetry Prize. She lives in Bangalore, India.

Catch the author on Twitter @MaitreyiKarnoor

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