Mother oversaw the construction of our house in Banjara Hills, which was soon to become our permanent address for more than four decades. In the early seventies, when we moved in, the soil was hard and rocky. It was made up of morrum rock, the stuff of hills that dotted the area for miles all around. Only wild things like cactus and some weed could grow in that condition. Father opted for a level ground of about six hundred square yards and began to work on it whenever he could spare time. Sadanand was his trusted lieutenant in his home gardening venture. The young lad worked hard, under the able directions of my father, and transformed the reluctant land into a rose garden, literally. Mother gave him food and money and a corner place to rest. Father helped him in getting an auto rickshaw to run and whenever he passed by he would come home and tend to the garden he raised. Father had hired the lad's father as an office assistant in his place of work and the man expressed his gratitude by sending his son to work in father's backyard.
The land got a new look. The top soil was removed and replaced with soft fluffy dark soil and impregnated with NPC periodically. Father made a hole in the ground, in the far corner of the plot, where we dumped kitchen waste. When the waste decomposed, it was mixed in the soil to enrich it. He never told us what to do; he did not give us orders. He just did what he had to do and we joined when we felt like it. He watered the plants, restored the tiny bunds built by Sadanand to retain water around the plants and removed litter from the soil. He worked silently, passionately, and with the sense of one who had all the time in the world. He worked with his bare hands, in a dhoti round his waist and chappals to protect his feet; he looked the quintessential gardener in his rolled up kurta; a bespectacled bald pate giving the look of an intellectual retiring to an earthy retreat.
We grew flowering plants in the front and vegetables in the sides and the back. A surge of joy rose in the heart at the sight of fresh and bright tomatoes shining red in the sunlight and the chillies hanging like a bunch of green darts on a brown board. Discovering a new born vegetable let loose a frenzy of wondrous exchanges about its size and colour, and sharing the news with everyone in the house. Everybody rushed to the spot and hunted for more in a joyous anticipatory tour of the garden - a merry-go-round of a family retinue followed the discoverer.
