Under the pressure of urbanisation, people are cutting down trees indiscriminately. In building homes and roads or in development work, trees seem to be the main obstacle in people's way. A family in India's Madhya Pradesh is an exception to this intolerance towards trees. In 1994 the family needed to extend their home, but on the chosen land stood a tree 150 years old.

Instead of cutting it down, they built the new house around the tree.

Two long decades have passed since. Inside the Kesharwani family's concrete house, the tall tree has slowly spread its branches and grown larger. Its branches and roots continue to spread, breaking through the windows, walls and roof of the house.

Yogesh Kesharwani, head of the family, said that although the tree is 150 years old, it still flowers and fruits regularly. Because of the huge tree, they have to take a long way round to go from one room to another, but they are used to it and regard the tree as a member of the family.

"We are nature lovers, and our father told us to protect this tree," he told the news agency AFP.

Known as the peepal, the tree is considered sacred by Indians, and cutting one down is seen as an insult to the sacred.

The Kesharwani family believe the tree keeps the house cool as well as being religiously important. Every morning the women of the house pray in front of it.

Yogesh said that even before construction was finished, local engineering and architecture students came to see how the house was built. "We don't consider the tree a problem at all. It stands there quietly in its own way," he said.

Source: Dhaka Tribune. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.