I guess I have a soft sweet side and like my forefathers I too
would like to get back to the soil. Plant fruit bearing trees, live off the
soil, grow crops, run a farm, ….screeech… bham, crash.. ok. Back to real life.
The only bit of gardening I have ever done is watering my two bamboo shoots
that I got as a gift.
There is a photo of my lovely office garden. Oh yes… it’s a garden
with a fake freaking peacock and a giraffe. Pretty corny.
In Dubai we had a huge gallery. It connected all the rooms. We
loved it. Dad used to do the gardening in there. We had plants and flowers, and
like good Dubai citizens, we even grew cactus there. It seems we also had
potted plants inside the house. Dad was asthmatic and once he had an attack
someone suggested to keep the plants outside the house. I guess it helped. So we
only had plants in the gallery and not in the house. I guess the fertilizer and
the other stuff was good for him. I would like some life around my house as
well. I keep asking Jasmine to have a few plants around the house. Sure she
says. She would like them too. But Jasmine is the practical kind of person. She
knows what it takes ot have plants. Her next one is always, who will take care
of them. That’s one more thing to take care of. And then when we go out of town
who will water them.
I like to invent things in my head and try to get practical
inventions all figured out in my head to solve real life issues. I have dreamt
of a water tap with real tiny holes that my neighbor has to simply connect to
the tap once a day to water the plants. Of course my neighbor isn’t really around
most of the time. ok…connect the pipe to the tap in my house and have only a
trickle flowing all the time through the tiny holes watering the plants whole
day? Whatever… but of course plants require much more than water. They need a
bit of tender loving care, fertilizers, pruning, cutting, etc..
I was once gifted a bamboo shoot, about eight years ago. I ignored
it thinking it doesn’t need too much water or care. Slowly it just died out. I never
bothered again. Then this time I got two shoots in succession as some gift. So I
decided this time to water them regularly. It is a part of my morning routine
to water them. When I go on leave I give it to someone else to water. Now I feel
pretty cool about them.
Over the last few weeks, I have been really busy, going
directly for meetings, not coming into my office for a few days etc. I saw that
the shoots were not taken care of. You can see the yellowing of the leaves. I then
decided to cop out. When the guy in the office came into my cabin to give me my
bottle of water I gave him the job of watering the plants every day. So there..
my tryst with gardening lasted a few months. It’s nice to have a garden and get
someone to do the gardening.
Now I think the next thing I want is some lemon grass
growing in the office. I have to figure a small enough pot than can stay on the
window sill and yet grow grass. It would be pretty cool to have a visitor come
over and offer some fresh lemon grass in their tea. That would be pretty cool. And
of course, all I have to do is get someone to water it. I think they grow
pretty fast and wild like that only. I will have to get someone to pot them. I don’t
even know how to repot grass. There are things that urban life has ensured I don’t
learn. Gardening and kite flying is something I wish I knew.
Hell – possibly some day…
