he looks like an ancient tree bent knotted gnarled and dressed in khaki long shorts he appears to be part of the lush green landscape in fact he res e m bl e s t u n g r u s the character played by naseeruddin shah in the film mandi this is ranmal the mali with green fingers and an integral part of parimal garden we discovered parimal garden and ranmal because of an amc announcement that they would be distributing free saplings at our doorstep to create a green revolution in the city we waited in anticipation but nothing happened so we started hunting for the source of this story ideas often generate revolutions keeping this in mind we did not abandon our search although it was like a shot in the dark after innumerable phone calls to friends we discovered that saplings had to be picked up from parimal garden five trips to the garden between midday to evening did not bear any fruit as either it was too early or too late we admit we had never been to parimal garden but when we saw it for the first time it came as a surprise it is beautiful lush green and wellplanned with a charming lotus pond there were birds squirrels joggers and lovers but no staff this entire operation was like a wild goose chase at last after a fortnight we found the officer in charge big boss was speaking to a small man in sign language this speechimpaired lilliputian happened to be ranmal after half an hour big boss turned to us and we asked him about the sapling story he told us that it was true but there were conditions like there is no home delivery it was then that we discovered ranmal with sign language big boss gave him instructions about the saplings we thought he would give us the worst but ranmal gave us the best he checked each and every sapling and kept it aside he touched the saplings tenderly as though they were his wards and carried them to the auto with utmost care we noticed that big boss was kind and depended a lot on the lilliputan and informed us that he had been with them for more than five decades ranmal understands trees this entire exercise gave us the opportunity to meet ranmal and we understood that even if he did not have the power of speech he was in complete communication with nature note how ranmal rhymes with parimal