THE DISAPPEARING TREES OF OUR CHILDHOOD: WHAT’S LEFT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOODS?

There was once a mango tree near the corner of our street — crooked, generous, and wildly out of place next to the concrete. In the summers, we sat under it with sticky palms and schoolbag stories. In the monsoons, it dropped leaves like secrets. It’s gone now. Paved over, forgotten, like so many others.

Across cities and towns, the trees of our childhood are disappearing — not in forests far away, but right outside our homes. The neem that kept the afternoon bearable. The peepal that knew our grandparents. The jacaranda whose purple petals marked the arrival of spring exams. Bit by bit, root by root, the familiar green canopy of our childhoods is vanishing — and with it, so much more than shade.

We often speak of development in terms of what’s being built. Towers. Roads. Shops. But rarely do we pause to ask: what’s being unbuilt? What is lost when a tree is cut to widen a road or “modernize” a street? Not just oxygen or cooling — though those are reason enough. But also memories, silence, slowness, and belonging.

Trees are more than nature. They are memory-markers. They are where friendships were made, secrets were shared, and bruised knees were nursed. They were the original meeting spots before phones. The backdrop to childhoods that felt rooted — literally.

Now, the saplings replacing these old giants are often ornamental, decorative, or planted in pots — less a part of the neighborhood, more a part of the plan. And while any green is welcome in a time of concrete suffocation, not all green holds the same meaning.

What’s at stake isn’t just nostalgia. It’s neighborhood identity. A street with no old trees feels anonymous, unfinished — like it hasn’t lived enough to have a past. And for young children growing up today, will “childhood tree” even be a phrase that means something?

So what’s left of our neighborhoods, once the trees are gone?

Wider roads, yes. Taller buildings, perhaps. But also emptier skies, hotter days, and a quiet ache where something familiar used to be. We lose the slow rhythm of seasonal change, the rustle that made silence musical, the shade that made space feel safe.

It’s not too late — but it is time to see trees not as background, but as central characters in our collective story. To stop measuring progress only in concrete and start asking what memories we’re making room for — and what roots we’re cutting off in the process.

Because when the trees of our childhood disappear, we don’t just lose green. We lose pieces of home.