The Little Patch of Earth

I remember thinking how beautiful the radish flowers are with their lovely lilacs and stark whites as I watched them get taller and wilder till they finally went to seed.

Over the years, considering what it has offered in terms of intangible lessons and returns, I'd emphatically say it is well worth it. Home-Gardening, I mean.

Knowing how plants grow, where our food comes from, how to care for the earth, composting, recycling, plant diseases, interdependence of nature's creatures, soil nutrition, harvesting, bugs and their role in the garden and suchlike are, at some level, hands-on for the kids, allowing me to learn a lot in the process as well.

Many simple and surprising recipes have come out of the home-garden harvest.

One of the lasting lessons for the kids has been composting. Organic waste goes into the compost bin in the kitchen, which dutifully gets emptied into the Earth Machine in the backyard. Og at 3 now knows banana peel doesn't go in the trash, we put it for composting in our home.

If harvesting the weed-like oregano and mint and fennel and rosemary and lavender from the garden gives me pleasure, it makes me ecstatic to get the squashes and green beans and eggplants and chards and lettuce and onions and tomatoes and radishes and potatoes and peas from the home garden.

Ana likes to to help with the harvesting. Please get me 20 green beans and 8 mint leaves, Ana, I call from the kitchen and she chimes OK, Mama from the backyard, searching around for a basket. Og likes to pick what little raspberries and chards he can find and munch on them as he wanders around the backyard, looking around for worms and ladybugs.

We still need to buy vegetables from the markets - it is not like we are self-sufficient with a teeny patch of backyard garden. That isn't the goal at all.

With nothing other than passion to support my fantasy of a thriving backyard mini-farm, and no stamina or in-depth knowledge to sustain the vegetable gardening year-round, even if the weather permits, which it doesn't where I live, I make the most of the few months from April to September, knowing that a greenhouse is out of my limits for now. No cute duck ponds, native flora and fauna coexisting in our backyard. Yet.

It is possible that this passion might get put in the back-burner as kids grow older and my reserves of energy seem better utlilized elsewhere... but for now, I am glad to be invited to an impromptu picnic by Ana where she prepares her truly original delicacy: Garden-fresh Raspberry Stuffed with Red Currants.

My indoor plant dreams are somewhat throttled by the Chew-Anything-Green policy our kitties have adopted since kittenhood. Even if they have pots of their kitty grass all over the house they seem to take pleasure in chewing up the money plant and peace lily leaves and puking them out all over the house. Of course, what am I if I cannot outsmart a kitty with hanging pots?

Garden 2006 started with peas and strawberries and rhubarb in Spring, as usual. Then, it was mostly eggplants (many varieties), winter squashes, bell peppers, chilies, tomatoes, my favorites.

Garden 2007 was mostly the same as 2006, with a variety of lettuce and some onions and potatoes. And the grapevine finally establishing and bearing fruit.

Garden 2008 didn't see much of me at planting season, what with Oggie's arrival and all. Little girl Ana was a big help that year. D tried many varieties of tomatoes and peppers and sqaushes which are easy to grow, plus cauliflower. That was fun for us all to watch the cauliflower grow. Cleaning and using it was a bit tedious but c'est la vie with organic gardening. Oh, and Scallop Squash - my favorite summer squash - we had a bunch of it that year.

Garden 2009 is a slight bit of a blur for me as I was in India that whole summer. D said he planted corn and tomatoes and squashes as usual. That was the year we had a bounty of grapes, pears and plums - I remember coming back from India and enjoying the fruits.

Garden 2010 had the staples again - peas, onions, radishes, tomatoes, zucchini, potatoes, eggplant, chilies, spinach, lettuce, rainbow chards... as does Garden 2011.

This year looks like a couple of our squashes cross-pollinated or something - a weird butternut- squash shaped thin-skinned summer squash has sprung up which neither D nor I remember planting. It is still growing so we'll have to wait to see what it turns into.

The usual perennials like rhubarb, mint, fennel, rosemary and such come up despite my neglect, but, planting the annuals each year has been quite a learning experience for us all.

We let the radishes and onions go to seed and saved the seeds from last year for planting this year.

We let the fennel go to seed even though it is a perennial, and collected the wonderful fennel seeds. I toast them and save them for soothing the tummy and freshening the breath after meals.

Seed Saving and Organic Gardening. Romantic and possibly Affected as they sound, seems to be a way of life for many today.

When Ana declares, I am going to have a large farm and a house in it, with sheep and ducks and chicken, and adds, You and Papa can come and stay with me, Mama; Og too if he wants, it feels like if nothing else, all that sweat and weeding at least served to impress one young mind. Possibly two. Three, including me, who was a city girl growing up with potted indoor plants for the most part.

Thaathaa shuffled off the mortal coil

I have only mentioned my grandpa (thaathaa) a couple of times in the nearly 450 posts here - not because I had nothing to say, but precisely because nothing I say can really change anything except help me deal with my own feelings temporarily.

From his humble beginnings, of which I have only heard from my mom, after many struggles to face and overcome challenges life throws constantly, to his last days when all four of his children were near him, Thaathaa's life is worth a book. Much like any grandpa out there from his era.

And now that he has departed from the dimensions we can perceive, I feel quite heavy.

Thaathaa, Sowkyama Irukkela?

I feel the chillness of dawn creeping over me. My eyelids scrunch up to preserve the blissful darkness. Somewhere from the depths of my semi-consciousness D K Pattammal puppeteers my reluctant body to move to the melodic composition Kapali... Karunai nilavu pozhi vadanamadiyanoru... My persistent attempts to huddle under the blanket fail repeatedly on account of it being folded and put away. My annoyed self accepts defeat and wakes up to find Thaathaa singing along in his usual head-lolling way that never fails to amuse me.

A Summer vacation tradition: spending a couple of nights at Thaathaa's (maternal grandpa) place even though Thaathaa lived just across town.

Like all Thaathaas I know, he wakes up so early in the morning it actually qualifies as late-at-night. Promptly, he likes to turn off the fan, pull off our sheer cotton blankets (used more for keeping mosquitoes at bay rather than the chill), open out all the windows, turn on All India Radio airing Carnatic music at full blast and start his cleansing ritual noisily before his Pratah Sandhya Vandanam and Surya Namaskaram rituals.

For a long time since I started registering such memories, being in the same town, Thaathaa would visit us several times a week in the evenings. I never bothered to understand why and didn't really attribute any specific reason for his visit other than that is what family was about - you just visited each other as often as you wanted, whenever you wanted, chatted about this and that, and that was that. Love had nothing to do with it, in my mind, at that time.

Riding the bus across town, barefoot, his white veshti folded up to facilitate movement, a black umbrella to shelter from blazing sun rather than any downpour, a little cloth tote bag full of only-he-knows-what, walking ramrod stiff in breakneck pace, he was quite a sight.

It is possible that I extrapolated from my mom's childhood anecdotes about Thaathaa being in the Army, but despite not being one bit interested in the "grown-up" topics he always talked about, I was a bit awed by him when I was little. And, very curious about his activities when he was not at our house (or his, when I go for impromptu visits on the way from school). He always seemed serious and annoyed with a I-dare-you-to-make-me-smile kind of attitude, but my mom assures me that he was quite a jovial young lad until the weight of responsibility (being the eldest of seven children) turned him into a no-nonsense retired Safety Inspector for Southern Railways.

As I grew older, I realized he spent most evenings attending lectures and discourses, and catching up with friends at the local temple, and generally going about town doing other stuff I didn't want to know about. As I got to know him, I noticed that he was not a lazy man, and in fact, in great physical shape as far as I can remember.

He always had a fantastic memory for trivia that I didn't care about - like, so-and-so's uncle's son-in-law's sister's second cousin's full name, bio-data and personal income and investment. How he gets such inside information and why he bothers to remember them, I am not sure... but, that defines him. He likes to know everything about everybody in his own methodical way.

On rare occasions, when I was at the end of my teens, he told me quite a bit about his Guru and his initiation and his expectations and beliefs... am not sure why, and I am sure he thought I was just feigning interest as my face usually remains inscrutable on such occasions, plus the inherent hierarchical respect generally keeps me reticent in his company.

I am glad to have accompanied him to, on rare occasions, some of the discourses around town, nearby temples, and the local Ramakrishna Ashram. I didn't think so at that time and would glare at my mom, desperately trying to find excuses not to go... not because I was not deeply philosophical and introspective, but because I felt terribly awkward being the only non-sexagenarian in such gatherings.

In retrospect, I think it made him feel good about it as much as it made me feel good that he feels good about showing me more meaningful things in life.

I remember one occasion fondly: when he came to visit me in the hostel in a different town in a different state, all the way, with no one else he knew in town to make it a I-was-in-the-neighborhood kind of visit. He came expressly because I was there and he wanted to see how I was doing. At least, that is how I want to remember it. He was quite an instant hit with my friends. Am not sure why they liked him, but my guess is that he was quintessential Thaathaa and the girls were seeing their own in him.

I wrote to him on and off initially when I came overseas to pursue my education. My mom kept me up-to-date about him, and for a while he moved in with my parents and I got to chat with him briefly on the phone. And, over the last dozen plus years, when I've focused on seeking my goals, finding my bearings and making a home of my own far away from my home, my communications with him have gradually dwindled to a strained top-of-my-voice, "Thaathaa, Eppadi Irukkel? Sowkyama?" repeated ad nauseum in the hope that his failing auditory faculties would just kick into action this once...

Gradually, as is inevitable, Old Age is overcoming him. One by one his primary faculties are beginning to fade. More than that, as I gather from my mom, his spirit has started to wither. At 93, he no longer wishes to be burdened by this corporeal existence.

I am not sure why, but, for the last few weeks I have been thinking about him fondly, itching to ask him, "Thaathaa, Sowkyama Irukkela*?"

*Grandpa, Are you fine?