In the cities of sand we inhabit, parched, one must have access to oases.
A year ended, the calendar turned its page, and life felt much harder than it usually does. The first day of this year I was in my Kolkata home, perched atop the water tank of my boyhood, listening to Kishore Kumar. Below me was our terrace garden, an inheritance left by my Thakuma, cared for by my mother and me for many years in between, and now, the only place in the Gariahat bari that Kakima calls her own. The tulsi-bedi is still there, the plant thriving for more than half a century. Next to it used to be the Tagar with its pinwheel flowers and Shiluli, whose bloom would herald the coming of Pujo. The Shiuli plant is no more, and so has vanished the Lebu. Kakima said it was good riddance, the Shiuli, as it was the favorite of the caterpillars. Dalim was still hanging on to its life, occasionally bearing its tart fruit. Farther away, the Nag Champa stood tall and proud - they been around for not too long. The blue flower of the pea and the whites of the chilli said hello, like college students do when a senior comes back to campus, gasping for life. A Canary Island Date Palm took up a hefty space and did not produce fruit. I asked Kakima, why don't you get rid of it. She said, it was a gift to Baba, when he was transferred back to Kolkata from Medinipur.
Back in Bangalore, the year resumed. Life limped on a broken rhythm, trying hard and falling short. One of these days, in a post-lunch whim, I ventured into the campus of our new office building across the road, and lost my way into an adjacent little garden, expecting nothing, and found love. Basant Ranis, not yet in their pink bloom, stood close by the Golden Showers. They were in cahoots with the broad-leaved peppermint - one of smaller ones from the Eucalyptus family. Mango trees, just a few metres tall now, spaced out, held the promise of a future of shade. Down below, along the grass, spread a canopy of Rose moss, flowering in the brightness of nonchalance. All along this peripheral garden the bright red flowers and green long leaves of the Indian Shot shook my hands. These plants are not even from this subcontinent, having been grown as a minor food-crop by the indigenous people of the Americas for thousands of years. The story goes that during the Sepoy Mutiny, her seeds were used by the rebels when they ran out of bullet. In an area marked as vegetable garden, I found Malabar Spinach, our Bengali Pui Shaak.
A few days later, I came back once more, and looked at other souls - a few who took refuge there in the middle of a busy day. I found a group of three working in the garden, putting in new soil and sorting some saplings. In my broken Kannada and Hindi, I said, I love your work and it gives me so much joy. One in the group made sense of my words and translated it. Their eyes smiled with the pride of joy-peddlers.
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