A Garden of Memories …

I spent my childhood in a lazy government colony. The house had huge airy rooms with high ceilings that kept us cool in summer. There was a garden at the back of the house with a thick hedgerow running around it. The hedgerow was home to a variety of insects, especially ladybirds. As children, we loved to capture the ladybirds and hold them cupped in our hands. We giggled at the ticklish feeling as they crawled across our palms, their black and red bodies glistening in the sun. 

The garden also had a huge banyan, a Gulmohar and a Peepal tree. A pink and purple bougainvillea trailed down the side of the house. The Gulmohar turned a flamboyant red every summer and together with the bougainvillea, added a burst of color to the otherwise summer parched garden. We used to collect the fallen gulmohar flowers, stick them behind our ears and behave like a group of Hawaiian dancers or use the petals as spooky nail extensions.

We kids believed that the Peepal tree had a ghost living in it and never ventured near it after dark. The ancient Banyan however, was a favorite spot for all of us. The branches were thick enough to keep out the hot summer sun and the earth under it always felt cool to the touch. My grandmother and I would spread a rug under the tree and I would sit reading while she pottered about gardening and when it got too hot, sitting in the shade and fretting over what the hot summer sun was doing to her plants. Nestled comfortably within the massive roots of the Banyan, with my back against its trunk, I would stare up at the thick leaves and daydream, or watch the antics of the squirrels running up and down the branches. Slowly with the aid of some food, I befriended the squirrels, and some even grew bold enough to eat from my hand.

My grandmother loved gardening and grew vegetables on one side of the garden and flowers on the other. In the evenings she would get the big water hose out and after watering the plants, would sprinkle the whole garden with water. The wet earth would make the whole area pleasantly cool. The smell of the wet earth combined with the scent of the Raat Ki Rani which bloomed every summer night, was simply heavenly. We would all drag our chairs out and sit talking under the stars, till the mosquitoes eventually drove us indoors.

Grandma’s favorite activity besides gardening was feeding the birds. A large variety of birds lived in the trees and their song would fill the air as soon as the sun rose. Birds’ chirping was the first sound I heard every morning. I would lie in bed hearing them sing, while my grandmother stirred next to me and got up murmuring her prayers. My grandmother never used a clock, for her the time to get up each morning was when the birds started to sing, and then dusk, when the birds returned to their nests, would be the time to light the evening Deeya.

I liked to help my grandmother feed the birds. We would venture out in the early morning sunlight, I carefully holding the bowl containing the bird seeds in both my small hands. We would scatter the seeds about and then fill a small earthen pot with water for the birds to drink from.

A wide variety of birds came down to feed; parrots, mynahs, pigeons and even the exotic bulbul, but my favorites were the sparrows. Somehow I liked this humble black and grey bird even more than the parrots or bulbuls. Most of them had their nest in the Peepal tree. They didn’t seem to be scared of the ghost!  The birds were also used to my grandmother and I liked to think that they waited for her each morning.

Sometimes my grandmother would take a little longer than usual over her prayers and we would be a little late in feeding the birds. The birds would get restless and the cacophony they created had to be heard to be believed. In summer the sparrows would use the earthen pot for not only drinking water but also for cooling off. I would never tire of seeing them duck themselves in their bird bath and then ruffle their feathers to shake off the excess water.

The Sparrows also seemed to love the old brick structure of our home. There were some loose bricks near the roof and they always built their nest there. My grandmother would never let anyone remove the nest and would try her best to guard it against the grey tabby that spent all its time prowling under it.

One day I found a little sparrow – hardly a fledgling lying under the neem tree, hurt and gasping for breath. I picked it up and took it in to my grandmother. She made a nest for it by putting some cotton wool in an old shoe box and nursed it back to health. I wanted to keep it as a pet but my grandfather convinced me about how unhappy the sparrow would be in a cage. I let the sparrow go, and later wrote my very first short story in Hindi about a sad little bird in a cage. Some years back, I rewrote it in English for my niece. It can be read here.

Years passed, my father gave up his government job and we moved to a flat in a more urban part of the city. We no longer had a garden but my parents made do by filling the front verandah with a variety of plants. My grandma however, returned to Chandigarh where she continued to lord regally over her immense garden. Even with her gone, we still continued the tradition of feeding the birds. I would put some bird seed and water out in the verandah and a few birds would come flapping down from the surrounding trees. Instead of having our tea in a garden we now had it in our living room but we kept the door open so that we could see the antics of the birds each morning. For the first few years the birds still came, specially the sparrows; but as more and more people shifted in and more and more trees were cut to make space for flats, slowly their numbers dwindled and finally they stopped altogether.

I am now woken up by a different set of sounds, that of cars honking, taps running and a door banging loudly somewhere. But in this medley of sounds, there is one sound that I so badly want to hear, and can hear no longer – the chirping of birds.

The seeds remain un-eaten and the bird bath lies forlorn and empty.

I suppose this is the price we pay for urbanization …..