Ghosts on Peepal Trees: My Journey from Folktales to Forests

Drawn from his handwritten notes, scattered across diaries, napkins, in the margins of newspapers and waste sheets of paper, the stories transport you into his childhood's lanes of Dehradun and the green cantonment of Pune where two remarkable women - his grandmother and a primary school teacher- inculcated the curiosity and respect for life that led him to becoming Peepal Baba. While travelling across 220 Indian districts, he finally understands how his grandmother's stories about ghosts on trees were actually lessons in how faith protects forests. How simple, honest acts of care, rooted in devotion rather than ambition, can draw millions into a movement, even when it has no structure and no name. Honest and quietly transformative, Ghosts on Peepal Trees is a reminder that we already know how to listen to the earth, to the stories that the soil tells us, and to feel the love in the shade of a tree and the poetry in the rustle of its leaves. We just need to remember.