Friday Thoughts: Flowerman of Rourkela

You may wonder what is so special about this photograph--just a bunch of trees. Well, true except all these trees were grown by a single man--a 78-year-old Mr. K.C.Naik, horticulturist by passion who lives in Rourkela, India.

Did you know that while some trees give shade, some can also reduce noise pollution with their thick foliage? One such tree is Chameli whose tree forms a natural sound barrier. Did you know Amirtha creeper can naturally boost your immune system and is now much sought after by pharma researchers? Well all these plants and many others grow in a park just outside his house. Each one of the trees and herbs planted and tended by him.

Not just that park, Naik finds vacant plots and negotiates to convert them into green paradise. Below is another garden that Naik adopted.

His pièce de résistance is a 20-acre rural development centre, two hours from Rourkela. This was a barren sloping and sandy land which he along with his friend converted into a colourful oasis producing flowers, plants and fruit trees of various kinds.

Naik walks and talks plants and flowers. People, who have known him for long, say flowers grow for him. To me he will always be the Flowerman of Rourkela, the man who often greeted me with fresh roses from his garden. And a man who loved me almost like his daughter.

I write this with a certain sense of sadness. He had pleaded with me to take over an important responsibility of saving his work. I have yet to do it. The burden weighs heavy on my heart.