CURATED BY – UMESH KUSHWAHA | CITYCHIEFNEWS

Satna, such is the misconception, villagers are cutting trees Baddu told that he planted hundreds of trees by bringing them from here and there in seven years. The village panchayat or the administration did not help in this work in any way. On the contrary, due to the misconception that peepal trees are inhabited by ghosts, some people of the village secretly cut the trees planted by him. In seven years, more than 50 ripe peepal trees were cut by the villagers. Despite this, he did not give up and prepared new saplings of peepal in place of the dried trees. There is no need of money or anyone's support to plant trees. If there is a passion to do something in the mind, then a forest can be grown even in barren land. This has been proved by 85-year-old Baddu Kori of Nachna village, famous as The Mountain Man in the region, by growing a forest in the desert. Baddu Kori, an old man from Nachna village, located near Jaitwara town, just 15 km from the district headquarters, is illiterate, yet he has such love for the environment that he, with his passion and enthusiasm, planted 2350 trees in seven years to create a forest in the barren land of the village reserved for the crematorium (in which even grass did not grow). These trees are now providing shade to the people visiting the crematorium and also providing pure oxygen to the village.

Left family for trees: Baddu said, when he started devoting all his time to the crematorium to plant trees, the children opposed it. When the family became an obstacle in the work, he left home and built a separate hut away from the village and remained engaged day and night in planting trees and protecting them.

Baddu told that seven years ago, when a person from the village died, he went to the crematorium to attend the last rites. It was summer. Everyone was suffering from the heat as there was no tree there. Troubled by this, the village head and the people said that Baddu, you should plant a peepal tree in the crematorium, it will provide shade to the people who come here and as long as that tree remains, your name will be known in the village. This thing touched Baddu's heart and he decided to make the crematorium a garden. He started planting trees with all his heart.
The villagers say that Baddu has nurtured the plants planted in the crematorium like children. Only then have the small plants been able to take the form of trees in the barren land. When the river water dries up, Baddu irrigates the trees for six months by carrying water in a pitcher from a hand pump located one kilometer away. In summer, if any plant starts getting scorched, then to protect it from the heat, he takes off his gamchha and bagli and covers the tree with it.