MVS Govt.

Arts & Science College, Mahabubnagar

Dept. of English

THE FELLING OF THE BANYAN TREE-- DILIP CHITRE

(Poem)

Dilip Chitre’s “Felling of the Banyan Tree” contains numerous instances that reveal the critical
tone of the poet towards the felling of the banyan tree. This poem describes the love of the poet
for trees and nature. The poet is sad about cutting down the trees in his own house, and he
compares it with murdering any human being. He is against cutting down the trees and building a
concrete jungle instead.

The poet says that his father told all the tenants to leave their houses. Then all those houses could
be demolished. All the houses other than the house of the poet's family and a banyan tree, which
was considered sacred by his grandmother, were demolished. All the trees were also cut down,
which included many sacred and medicinal trees. However, a big problem was cutting down the
giant Banyan tree, which stood tall with roots surrounded here and there deep. However, the
poet's father had also ordered to cut off the Banyan tree.

That tree was three times bigger than the poet’s house. Its trunk had a circumference of fifty feet.
Its aerial roots were thirty feet long, touching the ground. So, first of all, the branches were
shredded. As a result, insects and birds started to leave the tree. Fifty men chopped the fat trunk
of the tree continuously. Everybody got to see the rings of the Banyan tree showing its age of
around two hundred years. The poet and other people witnessed this slaughter in terror and
fascination. The poet further expresses that they moved to Bombay from Baroda soon after this,
where there were no trees. If there was any, it was in the dream only, looking forward to turning
into reality to touch the ground, converted into concrete buildings.

The Felling of The Banyan Tree as a poem is symbolical, mythical, and eco-centric. Th e p o em
r ef lec ts d if f er en t p o in ts o f v iew , rampant urbanization, construction, road-making,
renovation of older housing complexes, money-making, and supply of wooden logs to sawmills.
From the natural points of view, the older sturdy trees with their vigorous growth give
cool shade and add to greenery and oxygen level.'

THE BET—ANTON CHEKHOV (Short story)

Anton Chekov’s “The Bet” is a powerful short story published in 1889 about a banker and a
lawyer who make a bet with each other about the death penalty versus life in prison.

In the story, each wrestles with the idea of which is better or worse, and the culmination is a
twist ending. The story opens with the banker remembering a bet he made nearly fifteen years
earlier with a lawyer. During a party he was hosting, the two fell into a discussion and began to
debate whether life in prison or death would be more humane. For the banker, capital
punishment would be the preferable choice. The lawyer swore he would choose life in prison.
They agreed on a bet of two million rubles to see if the lawyer could spend fifteen years in
solitary confinement; the lawyer put himself into isolation. From here, we begin to see the
transformation of the lawyer. At first, he suffers. He is depressed and severely lonely. This state,
however, gives way to a period of great learning and self-reflection. Overall, the young man
reads more than 600 volumes in four years. After that, he spends his time studying the Gospels
and other histories of religion. In the last two years of isolation, he returns to the sciences and
philosophy.

While this is happening, the banker's fortune declines. He realizes towards the end of the
lawyer's confinement that he will be unable to pay the bet if the lawyer triumphs, and this debt
will completely ruin him. He makes a desperate plan to kill the lawyer so he will not have to pay
the debt. However, on his way to carrying out his plan, he finds a note written by the lawyer. In
the note, the lawyer explains that his time in isolation has changed him, and he believes that it is
best to renounce his wealth and live. Material goods are fleeting, and he now despises them in
favor of knowledge. Because of his newfound belief, he wishes to renounce the bet.

The banker is moved and leaves the lodge weeping. He is relieved that he does not have to carry
out his plan. Although the lawyer technically won the bet by proving he could survive fifteen
years of solitary confinement, he also loses the bet by renouncing it. This story touches on the
idea that confinement can fundamentally change who a person is. In death, there is no chance for
this significant change, but confinement might give a person a chance to have a transformation of
character. The lawyer begins his journey to win a great deal of money, but in the end, his
experience leads him to a completely different way of viewing life. One interesting theme is the
idea of experience. The lawyer claims that through his confinement, he could read about all
manner of human experiences, and he concludes that this is the same as having the experience
itself. He has decided to renounce most of these experiences without ever having them directly.

The fundamental theme of the story is that of life and death. In the original argument, the guests
are unsure which would be more humane or, more implicitly, a worse punishment. Is life worth
the price of death if that life is lived in confinement? What makes life good enough to live, and is
death preferable to life without freedom? Chekov does not definitively answer those questions,
and again, it is up to the reader to decide if the lawyer's transformation is preferable to death. The
lawyer seems to think so, but Chekov's intention is ultimately unclear. An implicit theme of the
story is that of humanity. In the beginning, both the banker and the lawyer make a critical bet
based on money. At the end of fifteen years, the thought of that money has driven the banker to
the point of murder. He only changes course when he realizes that he will not owe the money
and disavowed all human experiences in his isolation. While material goods no longer hold sway
over him, likely, the extreme isolation has still robbed him of his humanity

Overall, the story is an exciting insight into what desires drive humanity and what sorts of things
we are willing to do for material gain. It also questions our relationships with those around us,
insinuating that extreme isolation, while possibly a better alternative than death, will cause us to
lose our humanity.