THANE, July 5 -- Arpita and her son Pratik Walawalkar were participating in the final Ganesh Chaturthi aarti when a peepal tree branch fell on the pandal at Kolbad in Thane. Arpita, 54, was hit on the head and died before she was admitted to hospital. Pratik, 35, was injured on his lower back but sustained only minor injuries. "My back still hurts every now and then but I manage with painkillers and other medication," he says. The accident, on September 9, 2022, changed the Walawalkars forever. "My retired father, married sister and I had a tough time pulling ourselves together," says Pratik. "We lost the essence of a home." Then, eyes welling up, he remembers, "I was about to get married and my mother was very happy to get the daughter-in-law she always wanted. She didn't live to see that day." Pratik says, despite the loss of life due to tree collapses over the years, nothing has changed. "Our leaders don't care whether we live or die. All they want are our votes. Since votes are replaceable, our lives are dispensable." Each time there is a downpour, old memories return with fresh fears. "Just the other day, a gulmohar tree toppled in my housing society, exactly where I park my motorbike. Had it fallen in the morning, I could have been crushed," says Pratik. In August 2023, the state government announced compensation of Rs.1 lakh for the Walawalkars. It took his retired father three years and many, many visits to the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) to get the money. The sum was finally handed over two months ago. A year after his mother's death, Pratik became a co-petitioner in a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking the court's directions to the municipal authorities to remove the concrete choking the roots of trees on public streets. The concrete has suffocated the trees, leaving them unstable and in danger of toppling. "It is not true that only a minuscule percentage of trees need to be de-concretised in Thane. From my home to my gym alone, I can point out 30 such trees," he says. "The entire system seems to be immune to the fact that people who step out of their homes may not return alive. And this utter apathy passes off as the quintessential resilience of Mumbai!"...