“I didn’t know how magical it is to grow up in a home surrounded densely by plants and nature,” I said to my husband while we were sitting in our balcony garden in the small town of Nadiad, in Gujarat. “We had a raw garden which had its own beauty. My mother used to welcome with a whole heart whichever plant wanted to be a part of our house garden. Our family always being a little short of money, she hardly bought plants from the nursery but mostly borrowed plant pups and shoots from neighbors and relatives. But as children me and my sister were never involved in the process,” I continued.
In response, my husband shared how his boss, one of the leading urologists in India, had told him once, “I want to give the best to our urology residents. While they are here away from their family and homes, they shouldn’t feel out of place.” Since then, I have developed a deep sense of regard and respect for that man. Every morning when I used to handpick the fallen white-orange parijat with the utmost care, its enticing aroma made me thank him for building such a beautiful and green doctor’s colony with so much care and thought.
It was in 2018 after I got married and moved with my husband. Mornings were greeted with dancing blue-purple peacocks in our gardens infused with the scent of fresh dangling lemons all around. There were varieties of hibiscus swaying in different colors, a creeping allamanda (stretched all across the entrance gate), jasmine, roses, and pink and purple morning glories creeping across the walls and around the grassy grounds and glorifying our sometimes, dull mornings.
There was a separate section of kitchen garden built with care by our gardener Bhuvan and some housewives who wanted to grow their veggies, sometimes distributing a few among the other residents. The prominent vegetables among all were brinjals, lady’s fingers, beetroot, carrot, beans, chilies, and tomatoes.
Growing up, I never was too keen to build my garden but nature and greenery always mesmerized me. I remember how once one of my uncles who was trying to persuade me to grow my garden had mocked me for being just a selfish receiver when I was trying to make excuses not to maintain a garden of my own. He had said, ‘You want greenery, you claim to be a nature lover but you don’t want to toil in your hands in the mud and grow one of your own. How selfish!’
I was somehow convinced by my uncle. It was when I got married my husband had shared a wish,’ “I always wanted to have my own garden.” When I visited his apartment for the first time, I could see the dried leaves of the fiddle-leaf fig groaning for some water under the harsh sun of Gujarat summer.
I understood that he wanted to have a balcony garden but his residency life didn’t afford him the pleasure to have one in peace. Newly married and all red in love, I took the onus to gift my husband the little privilege of having his own little balcony garden where I dreamt of having calm sips of evening tea with him and occasionally a candlelight dinner or Sunday brunches.
That was the beginning of my passion and I didn’t know when and how those initial few nursery visits became an obsession for life. A good obsession, indeed! Within months our balcony was filled with many varieties of plants and flowers, the rarely blooming huge pink magnolia plant being my favorite.
It was for the first time I came across a plant called bleeding heart taking its interesting name from the shape of its flower – a cream-shaped bulb kind of structure leading to a tail-like red-colored outgrowth from it. Slowly my awareness in this area grew deeper and deeper in this area. I still cannot express that feeling of a new tiny leaf or a flower bud unfolding day by day before it takes its full form. It’s heavenly!
Once a complete novice in gardening, I realized that all it takes is practice and experience. Somehow this experience gave me the courage to believe that if I try and be consistent with whatever I pursue I might commit mistakes, but would grow no matter how fast or slow. This is how I committed myself to creative writing, art, and expression, and in the last three years with my consistent efforts have grown into a creative writer and a theatre artist.
I also thought maybe this is how parenthood would be, you are scared to take up the responsibility, and once you do you start understanding the drill. I experienced a similar feeling when we brought home our baby dog. Despite months of research, we were scared to even hold him in our hands and then what developed gradually was a mutual bond of love, care, and parenthood.
A few years back when a member of my extended family mocked me for how I had so much time to waste on growing plants on pots, I felt sorry for him for not knowing the pleasure and privilege he was denying himself, his family, and especially his child. I wish I had grown as a child and indulged in the pleasures of gardening and staying close to Mother Earth. Even though I couldn’t during my childhood, one thing that I was pretty sure about myself was that I would be a nature lover for life.
This was because I could always feel a connection with plants, animals, and nature around me. I loved taking walks in the parks, looking at the bright blooming flowers, and peeping out of the window (of a moving car, bus, or train) to have a view of the enchanting scenery. I remember how every year we visited our native place, Kerala, I used to be thrilled while running past coconut, banana, and rubber plantations.
Later wherever I moved, lived, or breathed, I ensured to take a dab of the nature lover in me. We moved from our beautiful abode in Gujarat in 2019 and since then we shifted to 5 apartments, currently staying in our own in Bengaluru. Whenever we moved (Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru), we bought and planted plants in pots, waste plastic containers, and even inside our tiny fish bowls.
I believe the universe has its own way of giving back in multitudes what we have offered to it in our own little ways. This was something I experienced when we shifted to an apartment facing the Pallikaranai Marshlands in Chennai. Every day we used to wake up to some beautiful sights. If one day we woke up to watch a gathering of flamingoes walking around the circular marshlands in search of their prey, there were other days when we slipped from our dreams into very real but dreamy semi-circular rainbows arching over the watery abode for the fishes and many aquatic creatures.
My love for plants helped me understand what kind of person I am and why I feel calm and so much at home in their company. I became surer of why I was always driven towards nature, plants, and pets right from childhood. It was not just the poise, peace, and calm that plants and trees offered me in their company but also the joy of fiddling my fingers in the fresh mud.
Every time I watered the pots it reminded me of the smell of the petrichor that soothed my senses. I realized how the tiny droplets on the green leaves shining like transparent pearls were enough to refresh me after a long tiring day. I started believing in channeling my energies through companies in which I liked spending time.
While gardening and staying closer to nature was always a soulful experience, I didn’t know how rewarding it would become with every passing day. It was in 2013 when life struck me hard. It stomped hope by its neck on the floor. Apart from losing my child who was stillborn, my first marriage was hanging on the brink. It was at that time when life seemed like a dark abyss when I turned to spirituality and gardening with whatever little space I found in my parent’s place.
The baby pink hibiscus plant still stands there strong and rooted, where I had planted it, and has indeed become a tree now in the last ten years. Now, whenever I visit my parents’ home in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, I look at it and realize how far I have come and how much happier I have grown. Had I succumbed to the dreadful thought of death peacefully embracing me in its arms on its own, never would I have experienced the beautiful life that was waiting ahead for me.
PS: All the images are from my own balcony gardens that we had built in our homes in Nadiad, Chennai, and Bengaluru.