For years, Devaki Amma’s days began in the paddy fields of Muthukulam, a coastal village in Kerala’s Alappuzha district. Farming was the rhythm of her life, work she had known since childhood and continued alongside her husband, Gopalakrishna Pillai, a retired headmaster.

Then, at 46, a car accident brought that rhythm to a sudden stop.

The injury severely restricted her movement, and doctors advised her to avoid physical strain for nearly three years. For someone used to working outdoors from dawn, the long stretch of enforced rest felt unbearable. The fields she had tended for decades were suddenly beyond her reach.

Life, as she knew it, had changed overnight.

How recovery turned into a habit of planting

Confined largely to her home, Devaki Amma began planting a single sapling on the sandy plot near her house, land that had until then only been used for post-harvest activities. It gave her something to do while her body healed. She planted another, then another. There was no plan to build a forest. It was simply a way to pass the days without her usual work.

That small, repeated act did not stop once she recovered. Friends and relatives began bringing seeds and cuttings on their visits, and her husband and children joined in the effort. 

Her daughter Thankamani, who would go on to head the Environmental Engineering department at a Thiruvananthapuram College, grew up watching this quiet, steady labour. 

What had started as a way to escape boredom slowly turned into a shared family project, and then into Devaki Amma's life's purpose. 

Turning sandy land into a living forest

Over more than four decades, Devaki Amma's saplings spread across nearly five........

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