I’m usually the sort of person who feels very competitive over practically anything. It might range from someone answering questions better than me to something as trivial as someone who folds clothes better than me.
To give you an idea of what or who my competitor is, I’ll first have to talk about my house.
To give you an idea of the place I live in, it practically is an architecturally marvelous desert. From my window, I can see the light shining of the glass panes of the tallest skyscraper in the world. The pattern that is formed by the skyscraper is something that would be etched in the minds of the flocks of visitors who set foot in the sands of the desert.
Amidst the architectural giants lies my tiny three storey building covered in glass panes. The building is a circular one and in the middle, lies a potential garden which now is essentially just a heap of sand.
Since I stay on the ground floor and since my balcony lies on ground level with that of the garden, I infiltrated a bit of the land of sand to place the pots of my plants. I proliferated one plant from the stem of another. I grew vegetables from the cuttings my mum willingly threw away.
Tulsi, Coriander, Mint, Tomato, Capsicum, Grass, Hibiscus.
The tulsi are all neatly arranged right in front of my balcony where I can see them and water them. The Hibiscus, which had once sat on the balustrade of my balcony, grew into a tall plant which needed more room than I had given it, so it was shifted to grow in a large tub full of garden soil. It produces bright shiny red colored flowers on a daily basis. Tomato was destroyed by a lice-like creature called aphids, which decided to make the plant its abode. The Capsicum is still there but hasn’t grown beyond the height at which I had transplanted it. Grass is, well, grass so it seems okay. Mint has grown more beautifully than I had imagined so we do use it for cooking occasionally.
Inside the house, on the window sill of my hall, lies the babies of all the adult plants that I have mentioned above. In the nurturing cold environment, in contrast to the hot sweltering 40 degree celsius temperature outside, grows the buds and the ones in need of repair and vacation.
Onion bud lies on top of a container of water and so does the top of two carrots. The mint branches, after my mum is done plucking off its beautiful leaves, is given to me, to be grown and propagated. Aloe Vera, which had once started wilting under the heat, was transported into the cold environment of my house and put in water for a vacation from the stress it had been in.
Pothos is my mother’s favorite and remains as the only plant she is truly interested in propagating.
My latest addition to my window sill is the seed of avocado.
I was proud of myself of having a green balcony despite the sweltering heat and having sand for soil.
So while I sat there caring for my beautiful plants, and propagating them as I wished, 3 tall plants appeared, in the barren land of sand heap in the middle of the building. A water way had been dug around the three plants. Curiosity pinched me as I did not know who was trying to develop a garden which had the prospects of being better than mine.
Soon when I went to visit my plants in the evening, there lay three sticks around the plant as someone would plant around a vine. Two days later, there appeared a modified fence. A fence which was basically made from anything a hand could grab. Till then, I had never seen the face of the person who competed with me in creating this garden. A spark of curiousity was aroused for two reasons.
Who was this man and what on earth was he planting?
He planted those three tall plants in the sand, which is a medium plants hate the most, and right under the 40 degree sun. So it had to be a plant which was heat tolerant and a sand lover. I googled the various possibilities to find out which of those he had planted.
Two days later, there appeared 4 dark patches in the soil. Tiny plants popped up from them, looking up at the sun. Around them were 4 sticks each. To me, he definitely seemed like he was from a gardening or a farming background. On the off chance, if he wasn’t from one of those backgrounds, “how could he be so much better at it than me”, my brain started probing.
I knew my brain was far more competitive than one could possibly endure but seeing the competition being exhibited for something as serene as gardening was really fascinating and hard to digest. I made it a point to accept that he was much more skilled at it than I was but everyday, when I looked at those plants, the buried competitive sense took a turn for the worse.
You know what’s worse?
It has been 2 weeks since this plantation mystery had started and I still do not know the man behind the plantation or the variety of the plant, which has flourished well under his care, despite being under the direct sunlight and at 40 degree celsius.
With deep hopes of finding my mysterious competitor,
Much love,
The Crazy Surgeon
The Soul Of A Surgeon 