The environmentalist from Karnataka who is a real-life embodiment of mother nature and also mother of trees.
Being unable to have children is a heartbreaking situation for anyone who wants to conceive. Not having a child in India is seen as a social curse. Women are surrounded by all kinds of superstitions in order to have a child. There are very few women who can rise above this mindset. This woman says that she has 800 children in the form of trees.
But in rural India, infertility carries an added stigma for women, who can be outcast from their families and society.
When Saalumarada Thimmakka and her husband Sri Bikkala Chikkayya found themselves childless after 25 years of marriage, she dealt with it in an unusual way.
The illiterate farm laborer from Karnataka, southern India, planted hundreds of trees, which the couple nurtured, watered and cared for “as children.”
“It was my fate to not have any children,” Thimmakka told CNN in an interview. “Because of that, we planned to plant trees and raise them and get blessings. We have treated the trees as our children.”
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