The Tree in Landfill

City Notes: Mumbai August 2026

A leafless tree stood in the middle of the Mankhurd garbage dump. The landfill spread for miles, swelling into uneven hills, made of things Mumbai had used, and thrown away. 

Mattresses lay split open, yellow foam blackened with sewage. 

Clothes once gifted to someone lay in the mud. 

Buckets without handles held black water. Mosquito larvae swimmed on the surface. 

Brown and shrivelled marigold garlands, lay among rotting vegetables. The gods were finished with them. So were the men who had prayed. 

Food spoiled inside torn plastic bags. Rice had become paste. Clouds of flies over the fish bones. Fruit rotted into a dark, sweet pulp. 

Rain had pasted newspapers to the mud. Ministers and murderers stared from pages already coming apart. The rain had erased everything they had promised or done. 

Dead batteries. Broken toys. One small shoe.

Crows circled over the dump, screaming. Stray dogs pulled at something beneath a blue tarpaulin. Smoke rose from a fire buried deep inside the garbage. It smelled of wet ash and burning plastic.

In the middle of it stood the tree. 

No leaves. No shade. 

Its branches were black and crooked, like accusing fingers. No sign that the next season would be green.

And yet the tree was beautiful. 

Not softly beautiful. Not bravely beautiful. 

It had the beauty of being stripped of everything it could lose, and still there.

It did not expect rescue.

It just stood among things the city no longer wanted.