The poem, ‘If I was a Tree’ presents a satirical account of the cruel and inhumane practise of caste discrimination practised in Indian society. The poem presents the impersonal and largehearted treatment of nature vis-a-vis the pettiness of man. The speaker speaks in the persona of an untouchable and presents some instances of untouchability that he/she is subjected to. He uses the tree as a metaphor for representing the plant world and highlights how agents of nature like the sunlight, the cool breeze and the raindrops would have treated an untouchable if he were not a tree when they come in contact with him.
The speaker says that if only he was not a tree his shadow would feel defiled when the sunlight embraced him; his friendship with the cool breeze and the leaves would not be sweet; the raindrops, taking him as an untouchable, would refuse to give him water to quench his thirst and the mother earth would flee him asking for a bath if she came to know that he was branching out further from his roots. Similarly, taking the bird as a representative of the animal world, the speaker says that if he were not a tree the bird would have asked him what caste he was if he wanted to build its nest on the tree. Similarly, if he were not a tree the sacred cow would not scrape her body on him scratching whenever it itched her and incidentally all the three hundred thousand gods sheltering inside her would not have touched him.
The speaker concludes optimistically, hoping that, because he is a tree at least, after Its ** the tree would be hacked into pieces of dry wood, and would be either used as fuel for the holy or a bier for a body. The pieces of wood, when they as fuel in the holy ***, would make him pure and if not, as a bier fora sinless body he would be borne on the shoulders of four good men. Thus the poem expresses the anguish and desperation of the untouchables.
