(Image credit – pixabay.com)

It was only the second day of April, but I was still living in the month of March. The sky was a sanguine shade of grey, cradling a false promise of rain. The three of us had driven through the city for lunch with friends, all the while taking in the sights of the pink blooms of the tabebuia trees on this side of town. I wish people took the time to know the name of these wispy flowering giants, instead of tagging them ignorantly as cherry blossoms. I left the AC turned off deliberately for most of the ride – I wanted to feel the humidity sliding down my skin as sweat beads. When we reached home after a lazy Sunday afternoon, we stepped into the garden to relax. He started watering the plants while our daughter stayed indoors coloring with her crayons.

“The heat of the summer is already upon us, and it’s only March,” I exclaimed.

“Wake up, it’s already April!” He smiled and nudged me.

Time had a manner of journeying on, with little regard for the currents of life. It was closer to 5 p.m. when I looked at my watch, but in my mind, the clock was about to strike four. The pandemic had stolen time from our hands – meals with friends, celebrations with relatives and countless trips that were never planned. Yet time moves on, oblivious to loss and gain. Sometimes, it shows us signs. Like the garden we were sitting in, a happy omen of the few months of nourishment and attention. Plants are proof that gardening is an art of patience. The bougainvillaea was barely a foot tall when we planted it last winter. Like doting parents who only watch in glee as a baby grows, we watered our bougainvillaea diligently in the first week. December started, and we were pleased that it was thriving and growing to be bushy. When the gardener visited us before the Christmas holidays, he looked at us like a parent disappointed at an 85% scorecard.

“Madam. If you don’t prune it, how do you expect it to grow till there?”

He was pointing at the neighbour’s wall, a pallid grey partition with paint peeling off. There were two windows that had stayed shut and had never been opened in the months since we had moved in. This barrier overlooked our young garden, an eyesore from the stone bench we had installed. Sometime in the monsoon months when the two of us were sitting on the bench and sipping mint tea, we realized that we were restless and eager for a remedy. The gardener planted the idea of a bougainvillaea in our minds, and we were sold on the idea of pink papery flowers littering our lawn.

“But we have been taking good care of it, and the plant looks happy.”

I pointed at the emerald branches defensively. They were covered in foliage, each twig spreading their arms out, ready to embrace the space around it.

“Please don’t let it grow horizontally, madam. We want it to grow tall. Like this.”

The gardener raised his arm above his head towards the wall, afraid that his broken English peppered with his mother tongue was incapable of expressing his intentions. He paused to place his arms on his waist for a few seconds and decided he was done rebuking me. It was time for action, and he began trimming the bougainvillaea. A thick mound of jute twine emerged from his bag, and he wound a few of the main branches together and tied them firmly to a pillar as if commanding them to march upwards. I wrapped my shrug tighter around my shoulders as the cold December air fluttered the leaves in protest while the stem was wound tightly with twine. The gardener sensed my discomfort and tried to console me, wiggling his head slightly to reassure me.

“It will grow ma, don’t worry.”

At the end of winter, the light had shifted, and the scorching sunshine now smiled upon our garden. Everything was a lush green — the lilies in the pond were basking in glory, the creepers in the vegetable patch were pregnant with beans and the bougainvillea had grown tall and was beginning to bloom. The fuchsia flowers were drawing all my visual attention in the landscape.

“It appears that our wall has put on some bright pink lipstick.”

He laughed with a twinkle in his eyes. We were sitting on the bench in our garden, enjoying the fruits of our labour. Last Sunday, we bought fish for our pond after being badgered for months by Aruna. The fishes had been elusive all week, well hidden by the large leaves of the lilies. But today they were playfully skittering around in plain view.

“Come here, Aruna. Sit in the garden.”

“There are too many mosquitoes outside,” she declared.

Aruna was bending over a colouring book on the other side of the French window. The room that led into our garden was her playpen, and her toys were scattered around. While she busied herself with crayons, I closed the mesh partition to stop the mosquitoes from bothering her.

We had bought a betel vine on our way home, in the many nurseries that had sprouted across the city’s bustling roads. I was unsure about where to plant it, so I walked around with the plastic pot in my arms. My idea of a proper garden was derived from my mother’s yard which always had a curry leaf plant thick with evergreen leaves and a large betel vine. Memories from my childhood flooded me, of Amma when she was about to temper the sambar and would’ve forgotten the magic ingredient.

“Munni, hurry up and pluck a twig of curry leaf. The leaves should be thick and green, ok?”

I would scuttle along and carefully pluck a twig with the widest leaves, just in time for them to be thrown into the tempering bowl. The oil would hiss, objecting to the presence of moisture but embracing the flavours. In a few years, I saw myself sending Aruna to run similar errands.

“Why did you want a betel vine anyway? We don’t eat beeda or paan!” My husband demanded.

“It’s for the ghee!”

Unconvinced, he waited for an elaborate explanation. The fishes were swimming around fearlessly now, the fluorescent green guppies gleaming through the murky waters.

“All the cream that I’m scooping from the milk, I’m going to churn it into butter and make ghee out of it.”

“Okay. But why do you need a betel leaf for that?”

“It’s for flavouring it! When you’re clarifying the butter and the milk solids have separated out, you add a betel leaf when it is nearly done. It makes a world of difference to the way ghee turns out.”

I was feeling indulgent at the thought of making my own ghee with betel leaves from our garden. My mother would’ve been proud of me. While I searched for a suitable spot for the betel vine, I noticed new growth in my curry leaf plant. My hope for a herb garden was seemingly complete with these two saplings.

The husband continued to be captivated by our small garden and its wonders. He tried yet again to lure our daughter out.

“Aruna, where should Amma plant the betel vine?”

She pointed randomly, without even lifting her head, at the compost pit in the corner. As if her disinterest wasn’t obvious enough, she was now cheekily putting it up for our display.

“Ah c’mon. That’s no place for a baby plant.”

Aruna continued to scribble in her book. She was too young to make comprehensible art, but the squiggly bits that she addressed as ‘snakes’ were a massive improvement from the past few months. Abandoning the crayons, she decided to play boss. With an air of authority, Aruna said “I want you to come inside.”

“Why?”

“There are too many mosquitoes in the garden!”

“I’ll stay here for a while; they aren’t bothering me.”

A few seconds of silence and a new excuse emerged.

“I must pee! Come in, it’s urgent!”

“Amma will take you to the bathroom.”

“No! I want Appa! Susu coming, susu coming......!”

He surrendered and headed inside. The same thought crossed our minds as my husband got up to attend to our daughter – She was getting smarter by the day.

Meanwhile, I stood on my toes and tried to grab the new branches of the bougainvillaea, coaxing them onto the strong twine that guided them toward the ash-grey exterior of our neighbour’s wall. The bougainvillaea was a hardy plant – the shoots were tender yet possessed an armour of thorns. The prickly appendages stopped me from grabbing them by the handful, and I carefully gathered the brand-new branch, leading it onto the tense twine. Wide green leaves stretched to gradually cover the wall. We may have been wilting in the heat, but the plants were flourishing in the summer sunshine.

I turned around to find them seated inside – my daughter was pretending to apply nail polish on my husband’s masculine feet with her pink crayon.

“Appa don’t move. The nail polish needs to dry,” she instructed.

“How long should I wait?”

“Till I tell you to move.”

Aruna now held an imaginary blow dryer and was ordering him to stay still. Soon enough, she lost interest in this charade and went back to her colouring book. The fishes flitted around the pond, iridescent streaks in a pool of jade and woody brown while the lilies had retired for the day, indifferent to the flurry of activity.

“When did we feed the fishes?”

“I don’t know. Was it yesterday?”

“Aruna, come let’s feed the fish.”

She abandoned the crayons and coloring book, and ran towards the pond, jumping in excitement. My husband had finally succeeded in tempting her out into the garden.

“Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

“Hang on, now. Be gentle.”

A sprinkle of fish food landed in our tiny pond as if she had tempered the placid pool. The fish ignored the food, and Aruna was unimpressed with their appetite. She went back inside, only to reappear in a few quick seconds. The pink crayon was broken, and she held one of the pieces between her fingers, bringing them carelessly close to her lips.

“I have brought fire to you.”

We were dumbstruck. “What?”

“So many people keep fire in their hands and bring it to their mouths like this.”

Aruna’s school was a 5-minute walk from the house, but the road leading to her school was punctuated with a beedi shop. All our attempts to get the encroachment removed had been in vain. We tried our best to shield our innocent daughter, but it seemed we had failed.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” I said firmly.

“Why not?”

My husband took over, trying to rationalize with Aruna.

“When those people do ‘this’ they’re hurting themselves ‘here’. So, it is not good for their health.” He pointed at her chest, where her lungs might be, in a desperate attempt to explain the perils of smoking to our barely three-year-old daughter.

“But they are doing it.”

“Who?”

“All those uncles.”

“They are stupid. They don’t know that they’re harming themselves.”

I silently cursed all the imbecile men who had ever smoked in front of her. The local governing body had turned a blind eye to our repeated petitions to graze down the smoke shop. My anger simmered inside, as my husband tried to navigate this minefield.

“Aren’t grown-ups supposed to know what they’re doing?”

“Not always.”

“Look Appa, I have bought you fire.”

We stared wordlessly at each other. Aruna retired back to using her crayons in her colouring book, blissfully ignorant about the conversation. Her pink crayon was grasped between her tender fingers, producing aimless squiggly lines. Nothing had happened, but everything had changed. The sun was setting somewhere far away on the horizon. Meanwhile, the pink bougainvillaea waged a silent battle with the smoky grey wall.