Sita’s Kitchen Garden

Update as of 14 January 2010

Sita tended her kitchen garden well. She had an unusual knack to get the right plants to grow in her garden (actually this was an understatement, the veggies and fruits wooed her for attention and always grew in abundance). So if she had the tomato vines growing wildly, just outside her kitchen back-door, the passion fruit vines grew more wildly clinging onto every pipe in the backyard to climb the house. A little further away was the potato patch, and close to it was the ladyfinger bed which was always blooming its yellow flowers and sprouting the sky pointing green okra. The edge of the garden always had its banana plants that stood sentinel, almost like guarding the garden. It had company of the pawpaw trees with its large leaves, and oblong fruits. The garden boundaries were marked by the hedges that were a couple of feet high, to keep away the grazing gazelles that frequented the neighbourhood. Sita spent most of her mid-mornings walking through the garden and tending to the plants – trimming some dry foliage, picking some of the vegetables, and weeding once a while. But this morning was unusual, there were tell-tale signs of gross destruction; the plants wee brutally sheared and some of the softer beds of herbs were trampled upon. Fortunately, the wet soil had preserved the tracks of the trespasser – the unmistakable narrow, but deep imprints, of a split ovals pressed into the ground (resembling a roasted coffee bean). Sita knew who the culprit was or were – the gazelles; but Sita wondered how these lithe herbivores managed to get into the garden which was always gated. On closer inspection of the hedge, she figured out how. The high hedges that grew thickly were low at one end of the garden and since it was hidden away behind the banana grove, she missed this out. The gazelle/s has skipped over this low hedge to taste the fruits of her labour.

The SENSEX was a largely a flat play today – mostly about 80 – 100 points up. The D Boyz did get fatigued at around mid-day and almost gave up all the gains of the morning, but good news flowing in from Europe (their friends in UK, Germany, France were faring well at their respective Streets) perked up their spirits and they in turn perked up the SENSEX. So at end of the day, they pulled it up 75 points – to 17584. The cold wave from the north, Europe and US also cooled D Street a little, forcing the D Boyz to skip their morning shower; so with less soap, shampoo used, some FMCG could not leverage their stock price; but otherwise, it was a cool day.

The usual struggle between man and beast is part of our folklore, as we urbanise. So Sita did what she thought was right for her; she got a barbed wire fence put up around the hedges and tossed some seeds over the hedge so that some of her crops could also grow outside her compound, providing fodder for the grazing gazelles, in time.

Cheers……