I took this picture at a tourist place, Vazhachal. It is a four-liner in praise of trees. It essentially says,

A pond equals ten wells, a lake equals ten such ponds, a son equals ten of lakes and a tree equals ten sons.

What a fillip for the sons, eh?! But errr… where are the daughters in all this?

Yup, I know this is about where the jokes come in (and some not jokes, but said in all seriousness), that a woman is so much more than a tree, or even ten or a hundred trees at that, what’s more she is the earth that gives birth to trees, blah,blah, blah. On top of this some other wisecrack is going to give me history lessons on how society was different back then and why this got written in such circumstances, like I didn’t know. Spare me, please.

For your information, the picture was not clicked when I time-traveled to the past, but in this age and time while on a trip that happened last year.

In this male-child obsessed society of ours, where girl children are still not allowed to be born, or are being killed soon after birth, where they are considered a burden by their own parents, do we really need to put up such a blatantly sexist signboard to convey the importance of trees/whatever?!

©Shail Mohan 2015