The kitchen garden

When we moved into our own home in Banjara Hills from the rented house in Abids, father spent more time home, tending to the kitchen garden he was so fond of that he spent a lot of his time and money in enriching the ground with artificial manure and fertile top soil. He took personal care in watering the plants and ensuring that they grew up protected from excessive sun and rain. Our house excited envy in the neighborhood, for we grew vegetables in the backyard such as cauliflower and cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes, green chillies and ladyfingers, brinjals and snake gourds. We had a difficult time protecting the coriander leaves from the numerous variety of birds in the neighbourhood, especially the sparrows, which have unfortunately disappeared at about the same time that father passed away. He had had the saplings of Ashoka trees planted in the front yard which today tower over the house like sentinels. He worked with his own hands and exulted when a flower bloomed or a brinjal sprouted on the tender stalks. The karipattha trees were ubiquitous and grew in large numbers with such a copious quantity of leaves that for years we never purchased them from the market. Even today we don't, though their numbers dwindled, the species survives to this day. Father hired a bony lad to work the soil once a week; the boy worked tirelessly and fed heartily from the plate mother offered him whenever he came to work. Father helped him get an autorickshaw and when he was not driving people around the city, he worked in our house whenever he was called to do so, for mother fed him generously and paid him despite his protests. The front of the house came alive with potted plants of crotons and cacti and the soil was luxuriant with flowering plants like hibiscus, lillies, marigolds and roses. The money plant crept across the windows, snaked across the balcony walls or climbed over to the roof, twisting, coiling and supporting itself over trees and banisters. We had three mango trees, two of them were identified as father tree and mother tree. I do not know how this naming came about, but alas the father tree succumbed to a deadly virus that hollowed out its huge trunk, lay bare its branches that once were proud of its leafy foliage, as a roosting place for birds and offered a seasonal bounty of mango fruit year after year. It died at about the same time that father left us. Desolate and under nourished, the soil too eventually lost its vigor and capacity to sustain life and soon after father's demise the garden of flowers and vegetables vanished. What lies today is not even a faint shadow of its former glory, for the soil exists in patches, covered over mostly by cement and stone slabs.
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