The “We Women Want Festival” was presented by the iTV Network on March 18, 2023, at the Juhu Hotel in Mumbai. Several Indian women achievers were honored during the second iteration of the We Women Want Shakti Awards, which was held in conjunction with the event.
The entire day-long celebration of women and their energy was filled with extravagance.
A noted environmentalist, SaalumaradaThimmakka, was also present at this colorful event. She was facilitated with the Shakti Award during the event. SaalumaradaThimmaka, a 2019 recipient of the Padma Shri award, and her spouse BikkalaChikkayya planted 384 banyan trees along a 4-kilometer stretch of what is now a highway in the MagadiTaluk of rural Bengaluru, Karnataka.
She has been referred to as a sylviculturist, an environmentalist, and the “mother of trees” thus far. When she won the National Citizen’s Award in 1995, the media and honors began to pay attention to her.
She lived in destitution for the majority of her life despite the honours, accolades, media attention, organizations that paid tribute to her, and foundations or organizations that bear her name.
Thimmakka’s notoriety never brought him wealth. Until the Karnataka State government constructed a house for her in 2014, she resided in a hut.She is reportedly a variety of ages.
She was said to be in her mid-70s in the 1990s, but as of right now, estimates put her age between 105 and 107/8. If there was a local municipality office, birth records had to be filed there or issued at the hospital during childbirth. Therefore, she is too young to give an exact age.
She was not born privileged, and this is just one more illustration of that. SaalumaradaThimmakka was a woman who was born into a farming family in a village and who was married off to BikaaluChikkaiah at a very early age. They lived a happy, hard-working, and comfortable existence together. After getting married, Thimakka was unable to conceive, and each year brought more anguish and criticism from her in-laws and family.
Her spouse stood by her during her trying times, and together they engaged in rituals, pilgrimages, and prayers that were recommended to them. As a part of these, the couple planted banyan trees. For a child, planting a tree sapling as part of a ritual developed into a caring connection with the sapling.
The 384 saplings were tended to and cared for during their leisure time and during the day.
That eventually developed into enormous banyan trees that covered a thoroughfare for four kilometers.Since the mid-1990s, SaalumaradaThimmakka has received widespread coverage in local to international newspapers as well as endorsement from environmental organizations. But since the 1990s until the year 2020, the vocabulary used to write about her has also changed.
No care was taken with the language, which ranged from calling her a “illiterate woman whom environmentalists love” in 1999 to a “infertile woman” who was helped by trees in 2016.
The couple came to view the trees as their offspring after what had originally been intended as a ritual for kids. In all of Karnataka’s Kannada textbooks, the tale is told in this manner.