What does it take to plant 20 million trees? Peepal Baba's memoir answers

In an age when environmental writing is often dominated by scientific data, policy debates and climate anxiety, Ghosts on Peepal Trees by Swami Prem Parivartan, known widely as Peepal Baba, offers something different: a deeply personal and culturally rooted meditation on humanity's relationship with nature. Part memoir, part environmental manifesto and part philosophical reflection, the book argues that some of our oldest stories may hold lessons for our most pressing contemporary challenges.

At its heart, the book traces the making of one of India’s most prolific environmentalists, who, through his foundation – Give Me Trees – has planted and preserved over 26 million trees across more than 220 districts in 21 states. But rather than foregrounding scale or institutional success, the memoir returns repeatedly to the quieter origins of that journey: childhood influences, early encounters with nature, and the subtle moral instruction embedded in everyday life.

The title itself is intriguing. Across India, generations grew up hearing tales of ghosts inhabiting peepal trees. For many, these were little more than superstitions designed to frighten children. Peepal Baba, however, proposes a more nuanced reading. What if these stories served a larger social purpose? What if folklore functioned as a form of environmental protection, discouraging people from cutting down ecologically significant trees? This idea forms the intellectual and emotional core of the book.

Among the memoir’s most engaging aspects is its exploration of the people who shaped the author’s worldview. Peepal Baba recalls a childhood influenced by stories told by his grandmother about spirits inhabiting peepal trees, as well as the quiet discipline and encouragement of his primary school teacher, Miss Williams, in Pune.

These early influences, combined with his growing fascination with the natural world, laid the foundation for a life dedicated to environmental conservation. Drawing extensively from personal experience, the author illustrates how ecological awareness is often nurtured not through textbooks but through culture, memory and lived experience.

One of the book's strengths lies in its ability to bridge seemingly disparate worlds. Modern environmental discourse tends to frame conservation as a technical challenge requiring policy interventions and scientific solutions. Peepal Baba does not reject these approaches but suggests they are incomplete without a cultural foundation. Throughout the book, he returns to the idea that societies protected nature long before the emergence of environmental science, often through traditions, myths and spiritual beliefs that fostered respect for the natural world.

The author's reflections on soil, forests and civilisation are among the most thought-provoking sections. He repeatedly emphasises that the health of human societies is inseparable from the health of the ecosystems that sustain them. While these observations are not entirely new, they acquire added force because they emerge from decades of grassroots engagement rather than abstract theorising.

The narrative is at its most compelling when it remains grounded in personal experience. Stories from the field and recollections from different stages of the author's life lend authenticity to the broader environmental message. Readers unfamiliar with Peepal Baba's work may find themselves drawn into a remarkable life dedicated to a cause that often receives attention only during environmental crises.

Yet the book is not without limitations. At times, the author's commitment to advocacy overshadows narrative momentum. Readers expecting a conventional autobiography filled with dramatic episodes may find the memoir more reflective than event-driven. Certain passages read less like storytelling and more like appeals for ecological consciousness. Whether this is a weakness or a deliberate choice will depend on the reader's expectations.

Nevertheless, Ghosts on Peepal Trees succeeds in offering a perspective that is both timely and distinctive. Rather than presenting environmentalism as an imported modern concern, it locates ecological wisdom within India's own cultural traditions. In doing so, the book challenges readers to reconsider the stories they inherited and the landscapes they inhabit.

Ultimately, Ghosts on Peepal Trees is less about ghosts than about what societies choose to remember. It proposes that ecological wisdom already exists within cultural memory, embedded in stories told by grandmothers, reinforced by teachers like Miss Williams, and lived through everyday acts of reverence. In Peepal Baba’s telling, conservation is not an external mission imposed upon communities, but an inheritance waiting to be recalled.

The memoir closes on a quiet but resonant note: that the earth still speaks, not in abstract data points, but in shade, soil and the rustle of leaves, if only we learn, once again, how to listen.