Saalumarada Thimmakka, an Indian farm laborer who transformed her grief over being unable to conceive children into one of her country’s most enduring environmental legacies, planting and tending thousands of trees, died on Nov. 14 in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. She was believed to be 113.
Umesh B.N., the son she legally adopted when she was 100 and he was 27, confirmed her death.
Ms. Thimmakka became known as Saalumarada, meaning “row of trees,” a title that reflected her seven-decade planting endeavor and the moral authority she came to hold in a nation grappling with rapid development and environmental loss. After having spent much of her life in obscurity, she began receiving a torrent of honors and accolades in her 80s.
She did not transform environmental policy — but, to many, she gave the environmental movement in India a face that people could trust. In a country where environmental issues are often seen as the work of city-dwelling elites, technocrats and nongovernmental organizations, she was credited with representing a shift in thinking about who could have a hand in protecting the land and the ways in which caring for nature could be an everyday act.
“The thousands of trees planted by her stand as living symbols of her dedication and willingness to think beyond herself,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India wrote in a condolence letter to Mr. Umesh. “These trees will continue to remind generations to come that real change begins with simple actions and that impact can be gentle, yet profound.”
Ms. Thimmakka said she began planting trees with her husband in 1948 — roughly 20 years after their marriage, when she was about 36 — as an act of solace in the face of extreme sorrow. Her inability to have children was stigmatized within her community and made her an outcast. Taunting from her mother-in-law and others, she added, had driven her to attempt suicide.
She and her husband, Bikkalu Chikkaiah, transformed despair into a quiet act of creation, planting and nurturing banyan trees on both sides of a 2.5-mile stretch of road between Hulikal, her husband’s village, and Kudur, a village over, in Karnataka.
“It was my fate to not have any children,” Ms. Thimmakka told CNN in 2016. “Because of that, we planned to plant trees and raise them and get blessings. We have treated the trees as our children.”
Today, that road — once dusty and filled with parched travelers — is a green corridor lined with hundreds of towering trees that form a sprawling canopy.
She planted thousands of other types of trees as well, mostly throughout Karnataka and at locations like schools, hospitals and residential complexes.
It all began with 10 saplings and Mr. Chikkaiah, who was variously a cattle herder, quarry worker and agricultural laborer. He arrived one day with some banyan tree cuttings loaded on a bullock cart and asked his wife to follow, carrying water. He chose to plant banyan trees — which soon became the country’s national tree — because they were abundant in the village.
After planting the trees, he built makeshift fences of thorny branches to protect the saplings from cattle. The couple spent every morning before work watering the trees, carrying the water for miles in earthenware pots.
“They were so poor that they could not have bought new pots if those broke,” Ms. Thimmakka’s biographer, Indiramma Beluru, said.
The couple continued tending their trees for about a decade before a local politician, driving by in his car, noticed them watering and inquired about their work. After learning their story, he presented them with a medal at the village fair — the only recognition the couple received during Mr. Chikkaiah’s lifetime.
“This was the award she cherished the most,” Mr. Umesh said, “because it came while her husband was still alive.”
In 1991, three years after her husband’s death, a local Kannada-language daily newspaper ran an article about Ms. Thimmakka and her trees. A year later, an English-language national daily published a piece headlined “Thimmakka and her 284 children.”
The number of trees she was able to plant increased substantially after the attention. Official recognition and awards soon followed, including the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honors, in 2019. She was named environment ambassador of Karnataka in 2022.
She was invited to public functions and speaking engagements; according to Mr. Umesh, who accompanied her on trips, she was on the road for at least 200 days a year, even until a few years ago. Her home in Bengaluru, where she had lived for the last 15 years, was filled with plaques, trophies and garlands.
Ms. Thimmakka was illiterate and never attended school but enjoyed being among students at events and said she hoped to inspire each person to nurture at least 10 plants during his or her lifetime. Her oft-repeated message: “May there be rain, may there be a good harvest, may you never be a burden on this land. The country will then thrive. That’s all.”
As was customary at the time, Ms. Thimmakka was born with just the one name and was the second of six children of Chikkarangaiah and Vijiyamma. She was born in the Karnataka town of Gubbi in 1912, according to her passport. Her exact birth date was unknown, so it was recorded as Jan. 1 on government documents.
The family lived in extreme poverty, surviving on cooked roots dug from the ground. Her father was a debt-bonded laborer who worked at a landowner’s household to repay a loan, and the children supplemented the family’s income by collecting leaves used to make disposable plates and bowls, which they sold in neighboring villages. Ms. Thimmakka later found work in a quarry, where an accident left her partially blind in her right eye.
Ms. Thimmakka remained impoverished for most of her life, even after achieving national recognition. She found a form of consolation in Mr. Umesh. He had long nurtured a hobby of planting trees around his village school and other open spaces. In 2003, at 18, he read an article about Ms. Thimmakka and sought her out. Their meeting marked the beginning of a lasting bond; he now distributes thousands of saplings annually and organizes tree-planting drives.
In addition to Mr. Umesh, whom she legally adopted in 2012, she is survived by a brother and sister as well as Mr. Umesh’s son.
In a 2019 documentary film called “Saalumarada Thimmakka: The Green Crusader,” schoolchildren are seen singing, “Trees find shelter under Saalumarada Thimmakka, the wind catches its breath under Saalumarada Thimmakka.”
Addressing these children, she says, “Every tree I plant are my children. I am alive in each of them.”
Pragati K.B. is a reporter for The Times based in New Delhi, covering news from across India.
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