Residents of a neighbourhood in Chennai drawing up a tree map for their local park

An Indira Nagar resident with a hard-to-miss commitment to practising sustainability, a tree watcher and nurturer C. Namachivayam delights in maps, essentially quickly scrawled sketches. If it were possible to converse entirely in maps, he would choose “Mapish” over English. He is given to flagging problems in the delivery of civic amenities by government line agencies. Whenever he brings up a civic issue, he invariably surfaces a map pinpointing it. The location with the exact spot where the “wound” is found suppurating and its precincts would all be mapped out. For once, he is preparing an “upbeat” map, a tree map for the famous Indira Nagar park on Indira Nagar Fourth Cross Street together with an “arbor” of like-minded residents delighting in the park and its trees.

Namachivayam has drawn up a rough map, a pen sketch, with the trees located on it and named. The park is circular; it “hangs out” with two streets — Indira Nagar Fourth Cross Street and Indira Nagar Sixth Lane — which curve sufficiently to give the park its rotund shape. From the rough, partial drawing of the park with a listing of the trees by their names, one can see that if this tree list was run through the Simpson Reciprocal Index, it would return a high value, indicating a diversity of tree species.

These residents want to have a nameboard (tied not nailed) around each tree, indicating its species. A QR code in a boxy space on the nameboard will provide in-depth details about the tree, when scanned. Just one nameboard sans the QR code (for a Mahilam tree) has been created on a trail basis, says Namachivayam.

Hands have gone up to take up various aspects of the nameboard-assigning and tree-map work.

Namachivayam discusses the distribution of labour, a labour of love: “One of the residents, V.S. Ganesan has asked for the estimated cost of the project. He would then approach sponsors to fund the initiative. Another resident, Srinivasa Raghavan will be generating the QR codes that lead to information about the trees. On my part, I will identify the trees, get the plastic backup board of the required size, get the wires for tying the boards, select proper websites with information on the trees provide these to Raghavan for linking the information with the QR codes. And of course, I will get the stickers made, each with the tree name and QR code.”

Namachivayam sums it up: “It is a full-fledged project work with many activities, several participants; with residents taking ownership of their local park in a cooperative and participatory spirit.”