Ever since Corona hit the shores of UAE, we’d confined ourselves to the safety of our home. To be precise, from March 2020 till today as the calendar announces the beginning of a new month, September 2020. New ways of life demands new ways of passing time. How else do I justify my new found interest in balcony gardening? Something I never paid attention to and left as an exclusive passion by my sweetheart. My involvement was limited to appreciating the beauty of the flowers and clicking a few pictures occasionally.
All these got changed with
the extra time I had in hand as there was no travelling to and fro office. It
all started by seeing the tomato plants blooming and eventually producing
beautiful looking baby tomatoes. The happiness of plucking tomatoes that grew
in our own balcony was beyond words. There were a few other pots as well, some
with plants and others empty. The sack of potting soil was lying in one corner
of the balcony.
As the interest in gardening
started budding in my mind, I searched for the packets of seeds we got from a
local supermarket a while ago. Among the packets there was one of cucumber.
Since the hot summer season was still a couple of months away I decided to
plant them in one of the empty pots. Never did I imagine that filing a pot with
some soil, planting a few seeds and watering them every day and waiting for a
sprout can all be such rewarding feeling. The happiness was multiplied to see
lots of tiny yellow flowers filling the pot. I could sense my better half
watching all my excitement akin to a little boy who got a brand new toy!
The cucumber plants with their
yellow flowers gave us a lot of joy for a while. Then it started dying down one
by one. The increasing temperature was one of the reasons I believe.
Nevertheless I was not going to stop with one set back. Seeds from every other
fruit and vegetable we bought at home started to find its way to various pots. Some
of them sprouted and others didn’t even bother to show up. Many of them
followed the path of the cucumber plants.
Planting of seeds became such
a frenzy that I soon ran out of pots. I started thinking of getting bigger pots
as I was determined to recreate a ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ in Dubai! As the
summer months hit Middle East it was getting even more of a challenge to grow
the plants with temperatures climbing and was soon going to cross 40 Degree
Celsius! Hence every time I raised the point of buying new pots, my sweetheart shot
the idea down stating it’ll be a worthless effort and convinced me that we’ll
buy it closer to end of summer.
I visited the Hypermarket
nearby, though rare, during these Corona times. Every time I walked past the
aisle where they placed gardening items, the pots there seem to beckon me. I’ll
stand there and look at them with the dream of a blooming garden and almost
immediately the image of a hot summer sun breathing down an intense fire put a
burning hole in my dream. In between, an opportunity even came up when one of
the occupants from the next block was moving out and were selling their big
porcelain pots. The asking price was quite high and considering the summer
story, the thought of buy got a thumbs down. The game continued and my dream
remained at large.
While this was going on, a
thousand miles away near the shores of Mumbai, Shabana Begum was restless at
her home. She was stuck in Mumbai for the past three months due to Covid while
her family of husband and two grown up boys were in Dubai. They stayed a couple
of blocks away from us though we had never met them. In addition of being away
from her family for this long, Shabana was equally worried about her other
‘children’. She had a lovely garden in her balcony with a variety of plants,
flowering and otherwise. Her major concern was that in the entire home she was
the only soul who showed some concern towards the plants. She was truly worried
about their plight especially with the summer hitting its peak.
Shortly enough she managed to
get onto a flight to Dubai and as soon as she reached home, a heart breaking
sight greeted her! What remained of her beautiful garden to which she put her
heart and soul was reduced to a handful of plants which luckily survived the
heat despite of being rudely ignored. Soon, another unpleasant news also was
broken to her. The family had to shortly shift out of the apartment due to
personal reasons.
With an aching heart, Shabana
posted in the women’s WhatsApp group of our apartment about her intention of
giving away her pots. There were no pictures though. As luck would have it, my sweetheart
was one of the first ones to see the post and even before anyone else could lay
claim on them, she was quick to respond. It was agreed that we’ll visit Shabana
next day and take the pots.
We reached there thinking of
a couple of pots and what greeted us was nothing short of a jackpot! Multiple
outdoor type large pots with such assortment of plants, that even belittled by
dreams, were waiting for us to be grabbed, all for free!
I stood there in her balcony awestruck
in silence! All what I could do was thank three people. God first, then my wife
and finally Paulo Coelho!
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