Our Madurai. Our Trees.

Tamil Sangam literature classified landscapes by what grew and lived in them, and the fertile riverine tract — the kind of land Madurai sits within, along the Vaigai — was known as marutham: agricultural land, water, and the life that depends on both. Madurai has long been spoken of in that company — a city of rivers, groves and flowering trees, not just monuments.

That relationship between the city and its greenery isn't something we're inventing. It's something worth paying attention to again, as green cover in and around Madurai comes under the same pressure that every growing Indian city faces.

Maa_Tree starts here — in Madurai — because this is home, and because a movement about trees should begin somewhere it can be accountable, before it tries to be everywhere.