Buddha and the Banyan

This painting of part of a Banyan tree is done in oil on paper sized 10'' by 12''. The effort of doing an oil on paper was not as exciting as doing on a canvas, I felt that the paper does not take as much paint.But I received a book of oil painting paper as a gift and I need to use it :-)

This Banyan is special to me because this tree of an age of about more than 100 years, existed in the Monkey park of Basaveshwarnagar, Bangalore, very near to where I have been living for many years now. The tree housed hundreds of monkeys and birds. The residents of our area did not require an alarm clock to wake up in the morning since the birds started chirping as early as 3 am in the morning. (The monkeys were a menace though since they entered our houses and created havoc!) There were a lot of activities going on under this tree. The senior citizens sat down chatting and made new friends everyday.The children played to their hearts' content. There was a free yoga class going on for home makers and ladies were excited to visit the tree for their yoga. There was a laughter club where men and women of all ages met and started laughing with each other to remove stress and improve health! So at any given point of time there were hundreds of people under the tree, using its shade to go through their activities. One night, the tree crashed down completely from the roots. It looked like a huge bird fallen down with its wings spread all around. It was a sad day for all of us, the residents of this area and everyone was out in the morning to pay their "homage" to this tree.

It was amazing to see that the tree chose to come down at night when there were none underneath. It would have been a major disaster if it had fallen on so many people..Buddha preached Ahimsa, a rule of conduct that refrains from causing pain or injury to any living creature.I thought it was a virtue to be practiced by only humans..but how wrong I was!