All of it started with one young girl who believed in magic. She believed without a doubt that trees could talk. All one needed to do was listen. On many evenings she’d find herself on the terrace of her house, sitting cross legged and in deep conversation with the massive rain tree in front of her house. A gust of wind, the rustling of leaves – to her, all of these were the trees responding to her questions. Wonder and a sense of unconditional acceptance is what she discovered.  
Trees are seen as part of another entity, overlooked like many issues by us. Why is this? It is true that we have been desensitized to major upheavals around us. The objective of this project would be to bring in a new perspective of trees and to widen our horizons of how we define them. Is there a possibility that our indifference to nature lies rooted in the limitations of our definition of it? This intervention aims to bring back the girl who has long been forgotten, in every one of us. The girl who believed in magic, and in the power of looking at trees and nature a little ‘differently’.
The piece would use curiosity and ambiguity as its main factors. This would be a conversation between three trees using plastic cups connected by strings, letters from the trunks and various hand-made trail of marks on the ground. It would show the connection between these trees and of them being more than what we think they are.

- As this was one of my three main ideas for the project on guerrilla art, I’d listed a few possibilities of its execution. These were of writing notes on leaves and leaving it on the pavements, and of making my own ritual using trees taking Hindu tree worship as a reference. This would include using various powders, red threads and a few elements of my own. I have used many aspects of this idea in my final project but the execution needed a lot more thought.  
- I also thought of doing a performance where I’d enact my childhood years, watching and conversing with the trees. Could this be done in front of a cut tree trunk? On the pavement of a very busy road?

- This then brought me to my final idea of a conversation between two trees.

I knew I wanted this to be site specific and so I had a look around the Veterinary College campus in Bangalore and came across three trees in a perfect triangle which offered a lot of opportunities to experiment with the pattern of the strings. This is when I decided three trees would be more dynamic than just two, and was on the lookout for those. Another idea that struck me was to attach paper cups to the trunk of the trees and have them connect to each other using strings. This DIY telephone was made by each of us at least once in our childhood and would therefore resonate with everyone. It would show that the trees are communicating amongst themselves! And as I was sure I wanted to have letters to show the progress of this conversation, I decided to have eight A5 letters in total, hanging from the woolen strings. Here are a few images of anecdotes, references and ideas for execution that helped with strengthening the purpose of the project.

I wrote my letters, labelled and printed them on coloured paper to have them stand out against the white of the
other letters. These are written from different perspectives to portray how we are ultimately different parts of the same whole.  Here are my letters.
1
It was eons ago, when I took my first breath and unfurled my green arms, that I met her. I felt her before I saw her, this bundle of intensity directed towards me. She knelt down and touched my arm; her plump, young fingers were soft and tender. And the moment she did, there’d been an onslaught of something too complex for my infant mind to comprehend. It pulsed almost violently through my leafy veins; and then time came to a sudden, screeching halt.
2
I didn’t know then, that she’d done something to me that would change the course of my existence forever. All I did know was this craving for something unspoken, this subtle persistent ringing in the far corners of my consciousness, never too loud, yet crushing my insides until the fragments made their way to the inky depths of my soul. Depths I myself never knew I had.  
3
One afternoon as I stood with winds tickling my leaves, the persistent ant climbing up my side caught my attention. He’d come to me one day, beaten and dying. He’d almost lost his life to the rains. Today, as he made it to my lowest leaf with his tiny legs leaving fine trails, something seemed different. Almost unreal. There was a lot more of scrambling. His movements seemed stronger, and crisper. Each step seemed heavier, sending out tremors through me. It got to the point where it became hard for me to move, let alone breathe. I knew I was doing myself harm by resisting it, but shock and fear had me in their tight grasp. Fear of the unknown.

Soon numbness took over almost every inch of me, something else following in its wake. As it got to the last of me, I felt a storm of emotions from lifetimes ago. Just before everything went black, I felt a sense of familiarity so acute, I knew it was a memory.  
4
As I tried to find my bearings I saw multiple images of my leaves. But they seemed closer and bigger than usual. I looked down and saw my spidery long legs making their way on uneven branches....branches! The whole world
started to spin as I tried get my head around what had happened. I was him!

That was ages ago. Thinking back to that day always leaves me in awe. It was the beginning of something incredible. I became everything around me.
5
We watched as she sat on her terrace, cross-legged. It had started a few months ago. She’d come up, walked around a bit and then sat at the exact same spot. She’d looked up at us then, with an unwavering stare. She saw us. The familiar ringing had started and we knew what was about to follow. Our veins pulsed with it, our entire being shook with its intensity. Something was different this time. It seemed more powerful and she seemed all too calm about it, almost anticipating it. All the beings that came before her had been terrified for a split moment before we became one. But not her.
6
As I sat on my terrace and watched the trees, flashes of memories whizzed past me. The time I’d planted my first
sapling, its leaves so tender I’d sat there just feeling its smoothness until mom had asked me to go in for lunch. I’d returned a few hours later and it’d grown a whole inch! I’d nagged my parents for two weeks, trying to convince them that something had happened to my little sapling.

I’d been so furious when they hadn’t believed me. I set out to prove them wrong by writing a letter to the tree,
asking it to confess.  It never did, but the letters never stopped. I’d write about school and my friends, about
everything possible. I remembered the time when I’d written about losing my first pet. I’d left his ant jar at home
and had been walking from my sketching class when it’d started to pour. One moment he was in the palm of my
hand, and the next he was gone. I’d been devastated. I’d written three whole pages to my tree that day, most of it smudged by my tears. But the letters never stopped.
7
As we shook violently, we watched her with utter reverence. The yearning began, but this time around it was so
deep, almost like it were about to finally get fulfilled. For the first time that day, we saw her clutching something in her slender hands. They were a bunch of letters. Each time she sifted through one, the familiar onslaught of
emotions hit us. It finally made sense.....Our journey had begun because of her.

She’d kept us alive.
8
I’d gone to the terrace today with this strange, powerful urge to read my letters. As I whispered each word, the
world around me stilled and the air started to get warm. Energy shot through every inch of me and my pulse started to rise. But I kept reading and memorizing each line like my life depended on it. I’d come to the last letter. I smiled while I read it; the ground under me shaking. It’d started like all the others that preceded it –

to a ‘Dear friend’.

I used nine cups in total, with three on each trunk.  I illustrated the story of the letters on the cups. The recurring theme in all of these was that of the galaxy to show the innumerable possibilities that my story talks about.

I got letters in English, Malayalam and Kannada. As I explained the project, I’d tell them that the letter could be about anything they’d want to share with a friend. I observed that most people wrote about trees and very few wrote about matters in general that either irked or excited them. I wonder if the letters that were already hung there influenced the content. Could I have got them to be more personal if I hadn’t explained anything at all?!

People immediately got the idea of the paper cups and liked the illustrations on them. They also liked the concept of trees conversing amongst themselves. One person suggested that I stick to that and have people write snippets of their conversations instead of addressing their letters to a tree, as the second person. People also suggested using nylon threads to prevent the strings from sagging. These were very helpful and I do plan on taking these into account the next time I work on the project. Here are few of the responses to the project.

-Collect the letters and use them at different locations. Their voice would travel miles.
-Add the footprints and paw prints on the ground connecting the trees. This would resonate with my story.
-Leave a few cups unattached. People could interact with it. Either talk into them or keep them to their ears.
-Have a note saying they could take away any letter that they connect to.
-Have saplings laid out to form a trail, instead of paw prints. See how many of these people would take home.

This to me is the start of a journey that I clearly see myself embarking on in the future. I plan to carry forward my
passion for trees and spread the message of their significance to as many people as possible.  The letters by people clipped on the strings portray how our voices inevitably become a part of nature’s conversation, and that it is about time it be heard by all, loud and clear.