A tangle in Pillalamarri’s triumph tale Premium

Discover the iconic Pillalamarri banyan tree in Hyderabad, a mini forest with a rich ecosystem and historical significance.

A sharp turn at the Mettugadda crossroad of Mahabubnagar town, nearly 100 kilometres from Hyderabad, leads to a hilly region, speckled on both sides with quaint hamlets such as Thimmasani Pally and Doddalonipally — names which do not figure on Google Maps. A couple of twists and turns later on the roughly 3-km ghat road lies Pillalamarri, which means a children’s banyan in Telugu.

An iron grill fencing supported by concrete pillars runs around the tree complex, with an iron gate under lock and key. Before reaching the tree, a manually operated boom barrier allows only visitors with a ₹50-ticket into the complex, which also houses an ancient temple dismantled from the Srisailam dam submergence area and reconstructed here, an archaeology museum, a deer park, and a mini zoo.

It’s easy to ‘miss the tree for the woods’ here. It takes some time to realise that the thick canopy locked in by the Telangana Forest Department on the four-acre site is a single banyan tree with scores of branches and aerial roots. From a wrought iron elevated walkway outside the gate, visitors can view the tree’s gnarled, twisted branches extending horizontally 40-50 metres from the trunk.

Nobody is allowed inside. For anyone fortunate enough to gain entry, it’s a joy to watch the diverse fauna that made the tree their habitat. One may get the sight of an occasional paradise flycatcher flitting from one branch to the other, or hear the alarm call of a parakeet nesting in the tree’s hollow, watch hundreds of butterflies drift about as if in some animated world, or regard an army of worker ants forming a long line on a branch. The banyan is a mini forest in itself.

The paved pathway meandering around the tree leads to the dargah of two Sufi saints, Syed Shah Jamal Hussaini Chishti and Syed Shah Kamal Hussaini Chishti, as the sign board in Urdu and Telugu indicates. The shrine is 300 years old, yet younger than the banyan, under the shade of which the saints were buried. The tree is also called peerla marri (banyan with the saints) in Telugu, after the shrine. A seasonal stream flowing through the compound ends in a water body outside, keeping the groundwater recharged to support the banyan and the varied crops planted on the rocky terrain.

“The tree was much bigger than what is left of it now. As children, we were taken there for picnics, and it was a sight to behold. Later, the location fell into decay and became a hub of drunkards and drug addicts,” says Rama Devi, a 51-year-old homemaker from Mahabubnagar.