Dear Writer,
I have not been travelling of late. The last city I reached was Kolkata and it was too hot, so I flew to Bengaluru to be with the YQ team. Summer is pleasant in Bengaluru. At night, the cold breeze blows, often turning violent, while clouds rush towards higher plains. The day is sunny but never unusually hot or humid. There’s always rain lurking behind the curtain, eager to surprise when you least expect.
I have been living at a friend’s, Harsh. He has a simple 2 BHK with a beautiful balcony garden. He likes gardening. His father studied botany and since childhood, he’s spent time with plants. ‘My father remembers the Latin names of all the plants and he’d quiz me whenever we went to a nursery,’ Harsh says. If you survey his balcony, you will find a sizeable collection: areca palm, jasmine, red lily, money plant, aloe vera and of late, he has started growing vegetables too. Cabbage and gourds are sprouting. Tomato seeds didn’t breakout, overwatered, he says. Organic farming makes sense if you like cooking. No wonder he likes to cook.
Our day begins with a morning ritual. We fill the bucket to the brim and water the plants. A bit restraint when it comes to the ones that haven’t yet sprouted, but lavish in treating the blooming money plant and the palm. ‘The balcony would be empty earlier,’ Harsh says, ‘with only the money plant there.’ It was a gift from someone. Someone who lived in Delhi but often visited, someone he loved and who loved him. When she gifted it, Harsh didn’t take care of the plant for the longest time. A couple of times, the money plant almost died and he supplemented it with another stem from nearby. It somehow survived the neglect, but sadly their relationship didn’t. Late last year, it did succumb to his neglect.
‘Earlier I would race home to get on a daily call with my friend, but the very home started to haunt me. There was nothing to look forward to. No video calls, no messages. I stopped coming home, and would spend the night at my colleague’s place, watching sitcoms to while away my sense of loss,’ Harsh sighs.
One December morning, restless at home, Harsh went and bought a couple of plants in a huff. For the next two days, he wasn’t home and as usual, went to his friends. When he returned, he found the plants shrivelled to their skeleton, almost dead. He watered them day and night, but they didn’t survive. He decided he’d keep watering them nevertheless. That’s when the morning ritual started. Two weeks later, an astonishing thing happened. A marigold magically sprouted like hope. It grew in the same pot in which money plant was struggling to thrive, with merely four leaves over the past few months. Marigold started growing crazily.
‘It was shooting for the stars,’ Harsh says. ‘It would speak to me. If I missed watering it, it would be all morose and gloomy. And then I watered and visited it after ten minutes, it would be blooming like a kid facing the cooler.’ It made Harsh happy, gave him something to look forward to at home. ‘I never missed returning home after I saw how much the plant desired my company, my care. It’s almost like having a pet at home. A part of you always keeps missing it, desiring to go back and see it, touch it once more.’ Now, there was more life at home than elsewhere. A month later, the marigold became the ladder on which the money plant bloomed to over twenty leaves. One day, all of a sudden, the marigold passed away. It seemed old and withered, despite adequate sunlight and water all the while. Nothing could save it. It seemed it came for a brief while to give the fledgeling money plant a new life, and to turn Harsh into a gardener, for the surprise appearance of a beautiful flowering plant made him get more plants at home and learn to care like a parent. The loss of companionship that he fretted over was found in the most giving living beings that wait for him every day at home.
Plants by their very nature root you. Whether it’s a balcony garden or the trees that you see around the Bengaluru roads. It makes even the traffic worthwhile. Plants are sensitive beings. They don’t give up if you don’t give up on them. And the thing that helps them thrive the most is the company of fellow plants, helping partake the turbulence of wind and the heat of the sun. The more plants you have, the more plants you will see magically appearing. Pollination is easy, yes, but there is also a joy, a hum that emanates from a bunch of plants standing together. At ease.
Plants embody the cycle of life and death. Every morning, when I go to water, a part of the plant is dying, the older flowers have lost their colour, a couple of leaves are parched, whereas there’s another leaf burgeoning, a flower budding, green and red and yellow, eager to open up to the welcoming sun. Life and death, at the same time, in the same being, yet the plant continues to survive, without mourning, without celebrating, just living — breathing in and out — like a Zen yogi.
Talk to plants, look at them sprout from within the mud and feel the surprise, feed them like a guest who has come to stay, to love, to bring you peace and happiness. Maybe one day, you will have a balcony infested with money plant leaves. A souvenir worth the care, the most alive part of the house. I will end this letter with a quote by Harsh: ‘Gardening is worshipping life in its most giving form.’
Gifting plants and words,
YourQuote Baba
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