"The Vanishing Green Heritage of the Kathmandu Valley" by Corinna Mascherin
Corinna Mascherin is pursuing her MA in Transcultural Studies at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, Germany.
In the shadow of the heritage preservation efforts that address the man-made crafts, architecture, and intangible traditions of the Kathmandu valley, there is another kind of heritage that is largely being overlooked and even threatened by the same city authorities in the name of progress. Trees and green areas are a rare sight in Kathmandu. The rapid urban sprawl that has soared in Nepal since the 1980s has caused large areas of rich, arable land in the valley to be covered in concrete, and plants have been sacrificed for the expansion of building space to meet the demands of a growing urban population (Taylor 2019). In 2019, the Kathmandu Ring Road Improvement Project announced its plan to cut down over two thousand trees along the Kalanki-Balaju-Maharajgung road, in order to expand the road from three lanes to eight, in a project funded by the Chinese government (Ojha 2019). The protests by environmentalists, activists, and urban planners of the valley were to little avail. As a result, there is hardly any consistent urban vegetation that can alleviate the ecological, health, and psychological pressures put on the city and on its inhabitants by the relentless traffic.
The few surviving trees seem to stand in the midst of the poisonous artificial environment as tenacious heroes (Fig. 1), yet the encroachment of built space and motorways all around them underlines their severe fragility. Lone-standing trees, like the one in the picture, are usually ‘transformed’ into chautari, rest stops where people can sit on a stone or concrete platform built around their trunks. Chautari found along trekking trails often function as rest points and geolocational references for travelers, while those rising in villages and cities are important public spaces, used for various purposes (to relax, to wait, to chat with friends, to sell products, etc.). As a public space, they are used mostly by men (many women prefer sitting on the stoop of their houses), while young people in the cities have grown used to hanging out in cafés instead. The trees of chautari are usually peepal (or bodhi) trees, which are held in high regard and often are the site of religious worship, a fact that also (usually) prevents them from being cut. Nevertheless, there have been reports of chautari hosting holy trees being brought down to enable road expansion works, as well (Dhakal 2019).
Lonely tree at an intersection in Thamel. Photo credi: Corinna Mascherin.
Many residents, especially of the older generations, complain about the disappearance of the chautari (ibid.). Besides being linked to personal memories and urban ecologies, chautari have an important cultural presence: they have been witness to several festivals, protests, and fasts unto death, and have left their mark even in traditional Nepali music and Nepali pop Nepali songs (ibid.). The removal of trees on public ground has also impacted devotional practices, as reported by a woman who now grows her own trees in her home to worship (ibid.). On the other hand, city authorities are trying to tackle public discontent with the situation by offering to replace the old chautari with “smart” ones, which will consist of public spaces with new temples, drinking water fountains, and even power points to charge one’s phone (ibid.).
Reading about such plans, I can’t help but think about the global trend of building so-called “smart” and sustainable cities, where top-down development promises to build functional public spaces, while usually being oblivious about what it really takes for space to attract and be enjoyed by people, and to be truly public. Couldn’t the city authorities recognize the value of existing, traditional public places—and of trees as makers of public space—and work for their preservation, rather than pursuing heritage-erasing globalized ideals of development? While historical buildings have long been recognized and protected as UNESCO World Heritage sites, lots of culturally and historically relevant elements, such as trees and chautari, have fallen off the radar of heritage preservation. If only plants, too, started to be considered part of a vanishing heritage of the Kathmandu valley, the city would enjoy not only more fresh air and pleasant sights, but also more places where people can rest from the hustle and bustle of the traffic, and connect with each other as well as with the other species with which whom they would share their living environment. Exactly like other kinds of tangible heritage, plants can attract people around them, provide a space for the unfolding of everyday life or ritual practices, and be the object (and subjects) of emotional, cultural, and biological bonds with the creatures among whom they live.
Special thanks to Muna Gurung and to Stefanie Lotter for their comments and suggestions.
References:
“Chautari.” Wikipedia. Last edited on January 20, 2021.
Dhakal, Pramita. “Where Have All the Chautaris Gone?”. The Kathmandu Post. September 12, 2019.