Trees Where Children Might Have Been
Saalumarada Thimmakka, a farm laborer from the southern Indian state of Karnataka, died in Bengaluru on Nov. 14, believed to be about 113 years old, after a lifetime spent turning bare roadsides into green corridors. She became a symbol of environmental care in India, admired not for drafting policies or leading big campaigns, but for showing how patient, everyday acts could transform a landscape.
Her path to this work began in sorrow: she and her husband, Bikkalu Chikkaiah, were unable to have children, a stigma that left her isolated and deeply distressed in her village. Out of that grief came the idea of nurturing trees instead, a way to pour parental love into something that could grow, shade travelers and outlive them both.
Starting around 1948, the couple planted banyan saplings along both sides of a roughly 2.5‑mile stretch of road between Hulikal and the nearby town of Kudur. Each day before heading to their low‑paid jobs, they hauled water in fragile earthen pots and built thorny fences to protect the young trees from grazing cattle.
Over time, that once dusty road turned into a tunnel of green, its towering banyans forming a continuous canopy that cooled the air and sheltered passers‑by. The effort later expanded beyond that single stretch, as Thimmakka planted thousands of additional trees across Karnataka, including on school grounds, near hospitals and in residential areas.
For decades, almost no one outside her immediate surroundings knew what she was doing. Recognition first arrived when a local politician happened to drive past, noticed the couple watering their saplings and gave them a medal at a village fair, the only honor her husband saw before his death.
Her story reached a wider audience only in the mid‑1990s, when regional and then national newspapers profiled the woman nicknamed “Saalumarada,” or “row of trees,” and described the hundreds of banyans she considered her children. That coverage turned her into a quiet celebrity, inspiring officials, environmentalists and ordinary citizens to see tree planting as an accessible act of stewardship.
As awards accumulated, including the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors, in 2019, her public role grew. She spent much of each year traveling to speak at events, often standing before students and urging them to care for at least 10 plants in their lifetimes so the land would not be overburdened.
Her influence resonated far beyond the places she physically visited because of who she was: a poor, illiterate woman from a rural background who had worked in quarries and fields. In a country where environmental debates often center on experts and urban activists, she offered a different archetype—proof that meaningful climate and conservation work can come from those with few resources and no formal education.
Thimmakka’s early life underscored that hardship. Born in Gubbi to a debt‑bonded laborer and his wife, she and her siblings gathered leaves to sell as disposable plates, and she later suffered an eye injury while working in a quarry. These experiences made her eventual fame, and the flood of garlands and plaques that filled her Bengaluru home, all the more striking.
Late in life, she formed a new kind of family through a young man named Umesh B.N., who had been organizing tree‑planting drives in his own village. After reading about her in 2003, he sought her out; their bond deepened over the years, and she legally adopted him in 2012, when she was about 100 and he was in his twenties.
Umesh helped manage her busy schedule and continued expanding the planting work, distributing thousands of saplings and coordinating new projects in her name. He has described her favorite recognition not as a national medal, but that first small village award shared with her husband, suggesting how much she valued being seen while they were still caring for the trees together.
Leaders across India, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, framed her legacy as evidence that small, consistent efforts can reshape both land and public imagination. Thimmakka herself offered a simpler message in her blessings to younger generations: may there be rain, good harvests and a way of living that does not weigh heavily on the earth.
