‘It’s for my daughter’s memory’: the Indian village where every girl’s life is celebrated

#TIA – We can still be surprised when a spontaneous outburst of great sentiment can reveal how great the need for it. Take these trees that celebrate girls. 

“Shyam Sunder Paliwal knows his way through the trees. Pushing through low branches, he reaches a shady copse where a profusion of different varieties grow. Every evening, he comes here on his motorbike to see one tree in particular, a burflower – kadam in Hindi – that symbolises sublime love. In the silence of the copse, he wraps both arms tightly around the slender trunk and rests his head against it, eyes closed. “This is my daughter’s,” he says.

Kiran, Paliwal’s 16-year-old daughter, died in 2006 – a tragedy he marked by planting the burflower tree. He went on to channel his grief into a mission. “She meant so much to me. How could parents kill a baby girl in the womb?””

Read more at The Guardian