Speaking to My Plants
While in the hills, I don’t get a chance to talk to my plants.
They do most of the talking.
Green-white ivy clinging to stone walls ascend in stepped welcome.
The ubiquitous gaillardia sway towards me in glad brown-eyed clumps.
The shy gazania open delicate faces, hesitant of their own bright yellows.
Hill lemons glow like bulbs at dusk, stiff thorny branches heavy with fragrance.
Rose climbers clamber over gates, shooting heady vines at me of nodding red.
The garden blushes pink at sunset.
I do speak sometimes.
When the hollyhock droops or the green chillies wilt
or when robust geraniums get knocked over by rodents of the night.
My local caretaker doesn’t bother to speak.
He hoes salt into the soil, or the ash of pine, wood and leaves
blocks rat holes with thorn bush and poison grass…stalks off with assurance.
I look at hillsides of wild purple primrose, pink bauhinia, blue gentian, red rhododendron
and think it must be God who speaks to them.
Immigrants
I am in our hill home and taking my evening walk. I look up at a local woman's balcony whose
garden I have always admired for its colourful slopes of seasonal flowers. On seeing me, she
comes down the steep steps, limping. Unlike earlier occasions, her body stoops, her smile is wan.
I have known her to be among the most hard working women in our hill town - tending fields,
cutting grass, feeding cattle, watering plants. She flops down on a step before she can reach me.
She tells me she had been badly injured by monkeys - not local monkeys, but large ferocious
creatures translocated from some urban centre, left here to relieve urbanites of their menace.
She had gone to gather the garlic pods and peaches she had harvested. A big monkey had
landed on a pile. She had thrown her stick at it, injuring it. From nowhere, a whole tribe
collected, tore at her foot, her scalp, ripped off her shirt and the skin on her back. They may
have killed her if nearby labourers hadn’t heard her screams. She would need injections for three
months, 21 of them and many medical tests and scans.
I look up to see her grandson water the potted geraniums on her balcony. She looks up too,
only to hide her tears.
wild grass —
a scythe
rusts in a field
Summer Visitors
This year our summer break is a mango orchard resort. Cottages are partly hidden under
thick generous branches of trees laden with raw mangoes. Each tree stands in a pit flooded with
water. A gardener tells me that water helps the fruit ripen quicker. Water egrets walk elegantly
through these pits, their yellow beaks dipping in for food. The gardener adds: ‘These birds
are very sharp in picking out insects, even mosquitoes which could otherwise trouble tourists’.
The day's quiet canopy of shady trees gives way to a night rife with the cacophony of frogs - a
discordant opera. I ask a service boy if this is a summer phenomenon. He says: 'The frogs are
migrants. They come for the water, sing to the mangoes to grow faster, sing to the tourists who
come to their verandahs to listen to their songs. The visitors even switch off their phones.'
nature retreat
peace descends
on a noise-filled night
Tanka
full moon
fish flock to silver spots
in a long wave of
job seekers
he feels the line’s empty bait
—
little birds flit
amid tiny pink
padam flowers
knowing my identity
I move about in the world
This poem was part of The Poetry Issue 2023, curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of these should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.
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