Rule of thumb

For a long time, my only association with plants was while hauling potted ones on my two-wheeler along with my mother precariously perched in the rear and having assorted leaves and flowers swaying in the cool Lalbagh breeze while this entourage made the life-threatening ride home. This symbiosis worked well though, my mother with her luscious green thumb would lovingly plant and nurture them until they bloomed and budded to her joy and to my grim satisfaction. A little trick was that I would always pick the plants that were near bloom since I never had the patience to wait till next year or a decade for blooms to appear.

When I moved out I made a startling discovery. On an impulse and extreme ambition(maybe I was drunk!) I decided to launch my own indoor plant collection with a pot of the jasmine creeper and curry leaves. You guessed it, I picked it up on my first trip to the local temple. It was probably nostalgia or homesickness, I wanted to recreate some part of the homeliness of a foliage. And the discovery I made was twofold. That I had a black thumb and secondly just cooing sweet words and watering on a regular basis werent enough for delicate and sensitive plants like the ones I had lovingly paid a fortune upon. The plants died sooner than expected at the shock treatment of my black thumb and not because of the ice and snow of the east coast winter.

As is customary, all of us are fed from a very young age, on a regular dose of the proverb "If at first you dont succeed, try, try again!". So I forged on- I experimented with geraniums, mums(which we used to call chrysanthemums), potted lilies and daisies all seemed to end in doom and no bloom in sight. (Did anyone catch the pattern there? It was all about colorful blooms, none of the green indoor plant variety for me!). Believe it or not, in a frenzy, once I harboured hopeful thoughts of investing a fortune in a potted orchid. Yes, you said it. It never struck me to not set my sights on creating a botanical garden but to start humbly with one indoor plant that would just inhale/exhale and grow.

Much to my chagrin, when I visited a close friend of mine, I found out she had a much greener thumb than my mother's and had already successfully planted seven rose shrubs with outstanding results. Yes, her backyard was a mini rose garden enveloped in color. On a road trip that visit, we both invested in bamboo shoots. I brought it back home and fed it with water, which was all the Asian store owner that sold the shoot told us needed to be done. What do you think happened? Well 3 months later the trash bin found a very dried and shrivelled bamboo shoot in it and the cute container that came with it was reused to hold pens!

The next trip , a year later, to the same friend's place found me staring into a 3-foot high bamboo shoot in a gigantic pot at the doorstep. Yes, the same sister bamboo plant!

"Thats it" I said to myself. The same friend had a kitchen counter top filled with a money plant seeping and creeping all over. She generously offered to donate the original pot since she had grafted enough. I checked in the pot and brought it home victoriously. I concluded I'd solved the problem.

I fed it with regular doses of water and MiracleGro(the guy at the Walmart gardening section sold it to me with great gusto promising outstanding results). Till today, I am never sure if my thumb dyed green, or if it was because I brought my friend's plant or good fortune, but this plant survived. And survived long enough to tell this tale. The creeper now extends from my living room to the kitchen for me to flaunt. In addition I bought a couple of indoor perennials and have never again attempted flowering plants. I even have a cactus at work which seems to be doing fine, but then I do realise cactii are survivors- they'd grow with a green or black thumb, color or no color.

There is one lesson learnt from this experience- Think big, start small. But there is nothing to beat the serenity and calm that greenery exhudes. Be it the majestic trees or the juicy green shrubs or the flowering seasonals or the freshly mowed lawns, they manage to delight and excite each of the senses in a myriad different ways.
Hence this would be my humble submission to go green for Earth Day(April 22nd)!