Colour by Memory

Another Holi is over.

As I look at the mixed colours of the flowers outside, I can almost see three little girls, Sonal, Vanita and Gowri, sitting at the edge of the flower bed and drying themselves in the hot sun on another lawn in another time. They seem sad that Holi is over but are already making plans for next year. They'll have more water and colours ready next time to throw at Babloo, Vivian, Vernon, Bobby and Uday.

What a happy thought - next year! Only 364 days to go! Next year they will all be one year older - one year closer to playing the boring Holi that Viji, Rekha, Manju and others go and play at Mamta Sinha's house, playing the dholak and singing songs.

But not as bad as Maiji and Babuji's Holi, all they did was walk around the colony going to each house with the uncles and aunties, carrying dry colour and putting only a little bit of that on each others' foreheads. 

Some doors never opened on Holi.

Maiji's plateful of ellu urundai was kept ready for visitors in the front veranda and next to it there was a plate with packets of red and green colour. Gupta Uncle, Uday's father, wore a starched white dhoti. Aunty, tiny next to him, in a fluffy white saree. Uncle had the second biggest smile - Babuji's was the biggest!

The girls would sit there in the sun until they were called home to have their baths and then eat. They knew that there'd be no more hot water baths allowed after today.

No sweaters needed, either, and best of all, they could switch on the fans in the evening.

A Taste of Home

On a cool and cloudy morning like today, I could have fooled myself into believing  I was in Bagracote Tea Garden in the late eighties. It must have been the freshness of the rain-washed breeze; Bagracote was a place where it rained everyday round the year. At three p.m., without fail - and that, as I said, was in the late eighties.

Those days, a hot meal of Uppuma and chutney like the one we just had for breakfast would have taken me back 'home' in the same way.

Home : a world both Mohan and I had left so far behind, in Delhi. We had to travel for many hours to reach Delhi. There were no telephones and certainly no coloured images flashing on screens to bring other worlds into our lives all day and everyday. For this reason, very few people in the city knew anything at all about tea gardens. I had never heard of the Dooars myself until I got married!

We were all afloat in a world that was remote and had very little in common with life in urban India. Almost all the little towns in the Dooars had come up only because of the tea gardens. The gardens themselves were less than a hundred years old!! The nearest city was Calcutta. There was no way you could bridge the gap between city  and garden with ease in those days; besides, each seemed to exist in a different time zone. 

Language, music and food: these were our connect with home. It was much the same for the people we knew here, for all our friends, for all Mohan's colleagues and their wives. In this way we were all united, in spite of  the things that made each one of us different.We had all created a home away from home. We had gained a new community, new relationships, and a  new family where we lived. We had two homes, then, and we enjoyed each in its place.

Most of the young planters today have their families living in towns nearby. There are two reasons for this. First, most of them belong to this region. The tea growing areas of North East India have well populated towns, and any number of youngsters choose tea as a profession. People from places like Delhi, Dehradun, Chandigarh or Kolkata don't turn up in large numbers looking to make a life in tea any longer.

The second reason is that many girls who marry planters get an opportunity to work in town these days, and their children attend school there. The bungalow becomes a weekend home for them, and often the planter husband/father goes and spends Sundays with the family in town. There is no longing for a home far away, and therefore no need to create another in the garden.

Painting the verandah at Moraghat T.E. Burra Bungalow before Diwali

Some years ago, one of Mohan's assistants - let's call him Vijay - asked to go home, to a town just 50 kms away from the garden, for Diwali. His wife and children lived there, in the house in which he had grown up. They would visit him on weekends.

This conversation took place at the club Diwali 'do' when all the children were having a wonderful time with 'pataakas' (fireworks). Diwali was two days away. We would all do up our bungalows with a bit of paint, lights and so on every year.  Diwali has a special quality in the garden, an added 'flavour', and I've always believed it is enhanced by the darkness and the silence around us.

To get back to the conversation -  Mohan asked Vijay whether he really wanted to leave his bungalow in darkness on Diwali night, and the boy replied quite blandly that the bungalow could never be 'home' for him, so why should he stay there and not light diyas (lamps) at home in town!

We were really stunned to hear that he - and so many others, as we now realise - thought that way!

Somehow, our longing for the old 'home' meant we lavished a lot of love on our new homes in what was then a distant land. We gloried in the otherness of  this life. And this was home, after all, for our children!

One year, we were in Delhi at Diwali time. Our little one was just two years old. She heard the sound of 'pataakas' (fire crackers) going off early in the evening, and she announced happily to her grandfather that elephants had come! That was what firecrackers - especially the loud ones called 'chocolate bomb' or 'atom bomb' - meant to a tea garden child, because they were used to frighten herds of wild elephants and keep them away! Our children's idea of 'normal life' included elephants, leopards and snakes, forests, rivers and mountains.

The world of tea gardens is still unique. The language(s), the jargon, the 'dastoor' or customs ( most of them quirky and anachronistic ) and the hierarchy, the feudal spirit, the grave danger, the solitude, the darkness, the silence - it's all one of a kind. Definitely not a life to be taken for granted.

Workers dancing and singing at Diwali time, Moraghat T.E. Burra Bungalow

Reflections of An Evening, written 2007

In Delhi, in the seventies, we used to look out for sunsets in the monsoon and post-monsoon months of August and September without fail. In a big and dry city like Delhi, rain was incredibly energetic. It was always a bonus; it brought high spirits, and it spelt romance. Spells of rain never lasted too long, and when they ended by evening, we got the additional treat of a sunset to enjoy and remember.

Evening curfew for a young girl like me in those days was lighting-up time. As soon as the street lights came on, I had to be home. What lovely late evening twilights we had. The light would fade slowly and grandly out of the sky, lingering until the clouds and trees were dark silhouettes. In my imagination, those banked up clouds on the horizon, black and purple masses, were mountains. The return home at the street light hour was followed by prayers in the back verandah. The puja was in the store room that opened off it. The back verandah would be lit only by the fading daylight and the storeroom was beautiful in the dark. It was comforting and yet exciting, and there were many smells that filled it: the sharp smell of the scrubbed brass villakku or the smoky smell of burnt oil wicks, the scent of goodies stored in big biscuit tins, and agarbatti, which dominated, and then took over my senses with its calming effect so that my troubles -- homework undone or a test the next day-- would be washed away. Only the comfort and the safety of my parents' home would remain.

It was remarkable that one could connect to nature in such a profound way in the heart of Delhi.

That was a long time ago, and the habit of enjoying a few quiet moments gathering one's thoughts at the end of the day remains. On some evenings, the day seems to die, and it has a melancholy feel. On other days, there is only a feeling of peace. Today, I was sitting outside our house and looking at the Bhutan Himalayas, purple and black masses against the Northern sky, and I dreamed they were the clouds of my Delhi childhood. One peak stood out sharply defined, perfectly symmetrical, and in the foreground, a gulmohar leaf swayed in the silent breeze. It could have been a calendar picture of Mt.Fuji with a leaf etching in front.

It rained all afternoon after an incredibly hot and sticky morning. The thunder was deafening and it was a really dramatic, high intensity storm. It cleared the air magically. By four o'clock, the sky was washed blue and the hills stood out in clear relief. I walked down to the National Highway -- a straight road leads to it from my house - at about five o'clock, with my head turned right to see the hills. They were silhouettes; I couldn’t see the trees on them at all, but I could see the ranges layered out distinctly. Where the sky met the hills, it was a lighter blue than anywhere else; almost whitish, and luminous. The silence that settled around this spectacle made me imagine it was a pre-dawn scene, as if something big was about to happen soon.
Back from my walk, I sat outside on a swing, with our patient and undemanding dog Simba at my feet. There was a gentle breeze blowing. Birds had returned to their nests and fallen silent. A truck rumbled past on the highway, but it wasn’t an unwelcome sound.

The sound of children playing somewhere in the distance was missing today. It is a typical evening sound. Once I was among children who played in the evenings out in the open, watching anxiously for the lights on the lampposts. Then, as a young adult, I remember sitting and daydreaming on the front steps in the evening and listening to a sad song about a lonely man watching the children play. I sit alone now and the children who played in this garden when they were little have left home. Home and childhood may seem very far away to them too. The complete tranquility and simplicity of those childhood years is lost for ever, but at moments such as these, one can recapture traces of it. 

Published here in my blog in 2007

Blues for Tea

My friend Raj enjoying a quiet moment at a picnic in Telepara Tea Garden

Last weekend we had the Annual General Meeting of our Tea Association, and almost all the families of the tea garden managers and assistant managers in the Dooars were present. It’s a time for friends – old and new, old and young. Dolly, who’s almost fifteen years younger than I am, is a joy to meet. She's young and fresh and her two lively little ones keep her active and smiling. I always look forward to seeing her at this big get together every year. It’s the only time we meet, since we live so far apart.
We finished exchanging all our news, and then she said, 'We value you and your husband because you represent an era when etiquette and values mattered. There are not too many people left from that time.'
That knocked me out. To someone of Dolly's age, I suppose I would look ancient! When my girls were little, how elderly the senior manager's wives, our Burra Memsaabs, appeared to me! What Dolly was saying sounded like what I used to say to some of the older ladies just a few years ago. I've hardly been here too long -- is twenty-two years a long time? Not to someone of my age. And am I a representative of the good days of tea life?
How much -- how little -- of the good old days have I seen?

Sitting by the fire in the evening, I gave some thought to the values which were talked about when I married and came to tea in 1986. Unfair practices or self-advancement were never tolerated at our clubs, and anyone guilty of such offences was booed down, ridiculed and later avoided by everybody. Toughness was considered a desirable quality, as it was understood that plantation life was tough, for both men and women. Toughness and honesty went together. Outspokenness was positively encouraged. Fights were common at the club - the men would 'sort out their differences' outside, and then have a drink together afterwards. High standards of quality were sought in the organisation of club dos and ladies' meets. There were no professional caterers at the time, and the ladies were all given their share of the cooking to do. Recipes would be handed out, since more than two people might be making a portion of the same dish. Shoddiness was unpardonable, and no one made excuses to the senior ladies who'd delegated responsibilities. Their word was law, and they in turn ensured that they appreciated every effort that the younger girls made. Inclusiveness, generosity and sharing were encouraged by example. I'm not glorifying the past, but people did have ideals then and they tried their best to live up to them. Those who didn’t try at least talked of doing so.

The ladies whom I admired were really remarkable. They were gracious, they laughed a lot, and they enjoyed every minute of all the good times we had - cheering the boys energetically at football and cricket matches, playing tennis and golf under the hottest sun or through miserable pouring rain, working for hours decorating the club house for children's parties, slaving in their hot kitchens with hot headed cooks to produce delectable feasts, throwing open their bungalows to everyone; and never pulling rank. They were all-rounders; good at games, good at gardening, cooking, baking, sewing and knitting. They lived in Burra Bungalows which were run with smooth efficiency, and almost all of them had to send their children away to boarding schools from the time they were seven or eight years old. They took it in their stride. They lived most of their lives in tea without televisions or telephones, and with newspapers that arrived two days old. Some of them lived in gardens which were completely out of the way, deep in the interior, and accessible only through mud tracks that passed for roads. They could only meet people one day in the week, when they left the garden to go to the club.

Anyone who got on the wrong side of these Burra Memsaabs and had to face their wrath was to be pitied. I have seen one Burra Memsaab refuse outright to cater for a games meet unless the budget was revised - and the secretary of the games association, who had been trying to cut corners everywhere, was almost weeping when he was told to 'manage' on singharas (samosas) and jhal muri from the town for his money! And this was after all the cards had been sent out inviting nearly two hundred people to the event. He revised his budget, apologised to the lady, and was humbly grateful to her for everything ever after.

One of our Burra Saabs and Memsaabs organised the company picnic every year. I remember one particularly well. We had to reach Lankapara Burra Bungalow early in the day, and then we were all loaded into lorries to reach the picnic site on the banks of the Torsa. The merry making finished at sundown, and back we got into those lorries, tired and dreading the long drives home. We weren't allowed to go home, though. We were all -- fifty to sixty people, men and wives, with children, babies and ayahs-- invited into the bungalow by Anjali, the Burra Memsaab, who'd been with us at the picnic all day and must have been more tired than anyone else. All the chairs in the house had been arranged around a brightly burning bonfire in the centre of the lawn. The drawing room had mattresses laid out for us to make our children take naps or for us to stretch out for a bit before starting another round of festivities outside. Bearers went around with hot milk for the babies, whose bottles had been collected and boiled in the kitchen earlier. Anjali's daughters served us all tea and coffee after we'd washed our faces and freshened up.

Our men were also served liquid refreshments which, strictly speaking, they didn't need.
The same men had been worked hard through the season. The company always organised games and picnics in the cold weather so that they could relax and enjoy life for a bit before staring off all over again. 'Work hard, play hard' they said, and back then, they meant it.

That is the biggest difference between those days and today, to my mind. Recreation, rest and relaxation are given low priority today. Traditions, ideals and values are abstractions. It takes something tangible to make them attractive, or even meaningful to young people. People ask repeatedly why ‘good boys’ are hard to find and why standards are going down in tea. The answer is simple. If boys are to be drawn to a career in tea today, companies need to offer them better pay packets, better housing, more holidays and more goodies to make up for the absence of city lights and the lost glamour of those old days.

Reflections of an Evening

In Delhi, in the seventies, we used to look out for sunsets in the monsoon and post-monsoon months of August and September without fail. In a big and dry city like Delhi, rain was incredibly energetic. It was always a bonus; it brought high spirits, and it spelt romance. Spells of rain never lasted too long, and when they ended by evening, we got the additional treat of a sunset to enjoy and remember.

Evening curfew for a young girl like me in those days was lighting-up time. As soon as the street lights came on, I had to be home. What lovely late evening twilights we had. The light would fade slowly and grandly out of the sky, lingering until the clouds and trees were dark silhouettes. In my imagination, those banked up clouds on the horizon, black and purple masses, were mountains. The return home at the street light hour was followed by prayers in the back verandah. The puja was in the store room that opened off it. The back verandah would be lit only by the fading daylight and the storeroom was beautiful in the dark. It was comforting and yet exciting, and there were many smells that filled it: the sharp smell of the scrubbed brass villakku or the smoky smell of burnt oil wicks, the scent of goodies stored in big biscuit tins, and agarbatti, which dominated, and then took over my senses with its calming effect so that my troubles -- homework undone or a test the next day-- would be washed away. Only the comfort and the safety of my parents' home would remain.

It was remarkable that one could connect to nature in such a profound way in the heart of Delhi.

That was a long time ago, and the habit of enjoying a few quiet moments gathering one's thoughts at the end of the day remains. On some evenings, the day seems to die, and it has a melancholy feel. On other days, there is only a feeling of peace. Today, I was sitting outside our house and looking at the Bhutan Himalayas, purple and black masses against the Northern sky, and I dreamed they were the clouds of my Delhi childhood. One peak stood out sharply defined, perfectly symmetrical, and in the foreground, a gulmohar leaf swayed in the silent breeze. It could have been a calendar picture of Mt.Fuji with a leaf etching in front.

It rained all afternoon after an incredibly hot and sticky morning. The thunder was deafening and it was a really dramatic, high intensity storm. It cleared the air magically. By four o'clock, the sky was washed blue and the hills stood out in clear relief. I walked down to the National Highway -- a straight road leads to it from my house - at about five o'clock, with my head turned right to see the hills. They were silhouettes; I couldn’t see the trees on them at all, but I could see the ranges layered out distinctly. Where the sky met the hills, it was a lighter blue than anywhere else; almost whitish, and luminous. The silence that settled around this spectacle made me imagine it was a pre-dawn scene, as if something big was about to happen soon.
Back from my walk, I sat outside on a swing, with our patient and undemanding dog Simba at my feet. There was a gentle breeze blowing. Birds had returned to their nests and fallen silent. A truck rumbled past on the highway, but it wasn’t an unwelcome sound.

The sound of children playing somewhere in the distance was missing today. It is a typical evening sound. Once I was among children who played in the evenings out in the open, watching anxiously for the lights on the lampposts. Then, as a young adult, I remember sitting and daydreaming on the front steps in the evening and listening to a sad song about a lonely man watching the children play. I sit alone now and the children who played in this garden when they were little have left home. Home and childhood may seem very far away to them too. The complete tranquility and simplicity of those childhood years is lost for ever, but at moments such as these, one can recapture traces of it.

Samsing

Copyright Gowri Mohanakrishnan

We have some beautiful old bungalows in the Dooars. Not all of them are cared for as they should be, because they belong to gardens which have, sadly, closed down.

Living in tea as we do, we tend to let ourselves be ruled by a code. It's not 'done' to barge in to a garden without informing the manager beforehand, not if you're going to take a look at a bungalow on his property. But what do you do when there is no manager? You barge in anyway. I first heard about the beauty of Samsing Bara Bungalow soon after I got married, twenty years ago. Someone asked my husband to be sure to take me there, as it was 'One of our best bungalows in the Dooars'. Samsing had belonged to Duncans, the company for which my husband then worked, and it had been sold a short while before I came to Dooars. People I met from Duncans spoke as if they'd lost a limb when they spoke of its loss. Soon after, however, the GNLF agitation took off and Samsing was one of the hotbeds of trouble. Perhaps Duncans was better off without it anyway! No one spoke of it now. Samsing borders on Darjeeling. Now that I've seen that border for myself, I realize that crossing over from Darjeeling District into Samsing Tea Garden would have been the easiest thing for the troublemakers to do.

To my surprise, our driver knew how to get there. My brother, who is a keen traveller and who shares our love for the Dooars, was with me. Within an hour of leaving home we were at the garden. I felt a little foolish, not at the thought of going off just to see a bungalow and not someone living in it, but at the thought of having lived so close to this place for so many years and never having been there! Chulsa subdistrict is one of the prettiest places in the Dooars. The Dooars wind from the banks of the Teesta eastward, bordered on the North by the Himalayas. Darjeeling District ends when you cross Chulsa forest, and the hills to the North are then Bhutan hills. Chulsa's gardens are up on a hill, and you get a lovely view of the plains from many of them. I'd been told that Samsing offered something even better, a view of the Darjeeling hills.

Once we entered the garden we started climbing downhill. I'd imagined we'd go higher and higher and probably find the bungalow on a peak. We wound down until we were just a few hundred feet above ground. We saw a large number of happy looking schoolchildren on their way home from school. There were signs of life and occupation everywhere, and it didn't look like an abandoned garden. We found that we'd reached the bungalow sooner than I expected. Like many Bara Bungalows of old, it presented its rear to approaching onlookers! There was a lovely old set of gateposts, solidly built, and surprisingly, freshly coated with choona. The gates were locked but were opened as soon as the driver uttered the magic words, 'Bagaan ka Memsaab aaya hai.' The road wound up from the gate, to bring us to the front of the bungalow.
It came as a shock. We were at the edge of a precipice. The front lawn just fell away into a gorge, and this huge hill loomed in front of us. What a location for a bungalow! It seemed to stand at the edge of the world. Ahead, there was this beautiful hill, with one face sloping down into the plains, covered in tea, and the remaining area terraced into paddy fields. We were quiet, and struck with wonder. That hill in front of us must be a part of Darjeeling. The bungalow servant who'd been sweeping the compound confirms this. The garden on which we look out is Kumai, which is at one end of Chulsa forest, but falls, interestingly, in Darjeeling District.

I turn to face the bungalow. To my relief, it isn't a crumbling old ruin. Far from it. It is a chang bungalow, and there are beautiful arches supporting the structure, no ugly stilts. The lower portion is covered in a beautiful dark green creeper. Grand steps lead up to the verandah and the house looks majestic. Its proportions are pleasing to the eye. It is majestic, but not pretentiously imposing. In short, it looks like someone's house, where you might live or visit, and not just a bungalow.

If you could allow yourself to see the house in your mind's eye as it might have been many years ago, with its roof freshly painted and potted plants all over the verandah, you'd think what a proud hostess the lady of Samsing would have been.

The house must wait, while we walk out on the lawn, towards the edge of the compound. Mercifully the compound isn't fenced in. There are blooming bougainvilleas there instead, and what we in North Bengal tend to call a 'Bhiew Point'. When we reach the middle of the lawn, we hear the river. I wonder what it must have felt like, for all the lucky people who ever occupied this house, to live in the Dooars and look out over Darjeeling, and to have the Murti river flowing in a gorge hundreds of feet below you, at the edge of your own garden!

We reach the view point and look down into the deep gorge and see the lovely river rushing past. Again, I get the feeling of being at the edge of the world. There is nothing now but the hills and their silences, and the gurgling music of the river. It is a moment of perfect peace. I wish I could hold this forever. That is not to be, of course.

Here is the eighty five year old mali come hurrying out from somewhere at the sight of visitors. He wants to talk about old times. The words, 'bagaan ka memsaab aaya' have worked their magic again. He is delighted when my brother greets him with a smiling namaste and congratulates him on his lovely garden. The old man shows us the camellias he'd planted and tended. There were so many colours then, he said, and now all the bushes have been pruned and never bloom at all.

With a silent apology to the spirit of the house for intruding, we climb the steps and enter. We cant help stopping to gaze at the lovely view again. But there's much to look at in the verandah, too. The tea table is lovely, large and circular, with beautifully carved legs. There are matching chairs. All they need is a bit of restoration. The floors are wooden, lovely and even, with no sign of warping or damage, even though they haven't seen a tin of polish in many years! A TT table stands in the verandah. One can imagine what happy afternoons children would have spent here. We could see the steps that had been cut into the lawn leading to the tennis court on the right. All that's left of it is one wall.

In the drawing room, we ignore the torn curtains and sagging upholstery and look instead at the beautiful French windows. We come across another delight—a chest, which a Chinese carpenter had made. The former paniwala who's showing us around opens it for us with some pride and shows us that it used to be a liquour cabinet! The dining room has some lovely old pieces which , we are told, were the work of the same 'Chinia Mistry'.The French windows in the drawing room and master bedrooms must have filled the house with light and air, and there must have been so much to look at, out in the compound.

Each room has a fireplace and all the bedrooms have skylights. The skylights are interestingly constructed, and no direct rays of the sun would have entered the rooms. Each skylight is carefully covered in wire mesh from the outside—surely to keep out bats and birds! The chimney stacks on the roof are beautiful too. We were pleasantly surprised to see that all the walls were freshly painted. This was done courtesy a film unit, we are told, which was stationed here some weeks ago to shoot a Bengali film.

The kitchen, at the end of the house, is beautifully sunlit. What feasts must have been prepared here for catering at Chulsa Club! What grand parties Samsing would have hosted! It looks like a house where people lived happily. There is a sense of its being ready for occupation again in spite of the shabby curtains and unpolished floors.

We in tea are a little behind the times when it comes to evaluating the riches that we hold. In a world that's raring to buy nostalgia, aren't we sitting on a gold mine? 'Shall we buy this house?' asks my brother. Just the house, not the troublesome garden, of course, he adds. Well, just suppose we did. And we had a tea bungalow running, you know, for tourists who'd be willing to pay a packet for the entire tea experience, with all its ceremony and style.

Breakfasts at nine, complete with fruit and juices from a newly invigorated Mali Bari. Carefully planned lunch menus, curries alternating with cold spreads. Bearers in spanking new livery, with the Samsing crest. Someone dressed up as Burra Saab coming stomping in and changing out of his kamjaari shoes, eating his meal and entertaining the guests with tales of the leopard in Section No.6. Only to dash off in his jeep again, to cool his heels and rehearse the dialogues for his next appearance, at tea time. English tea, presided over very correctly by a very proper Burra Memsaab, but served with Indian hospitality, nice and warm. Can you picture it all? We laugh at the way we let our ideas carry us away, but we realize there is a market for this kind of thing, and that it could well save Samsing!

I wept for a lost world when I stood at the view point overhanging the Murti. Sometimes a place can do a lot to you. It doesn't really need people in it.

Thoughts in a Garden

(Published in The Statesman, 22 March 2006.Copyright Gowri Mohanakrishnan)

I have begun to believe that the world is made up of two kinds of people: those who grew up in a house with a garden and those who didnt. I say this because anyone who enjoyed a garden as a child grows up to be a lover of nature.
Anyone who grew up in a house with a garden will remember the smell of a freshly mowed lawn; the heaps of cut grass, so aromatic, so tempting to jump into, and so surprisingly and painfully full of stinging insects. The garden hose pipe, with air bubbles rushing along in their race with the water. Those endless December holidays of my childhood in Delhi, when we would sit on the lawn listening to music or the cricket commentary on a transistor radio, while eating oranges and peanuts. We would chase the warm sunlight into the last corner of the garden before finally giving up and going indoors, shivering.

In the summer, we would carry our charpoys and spread out our sheets by eight o’clock to cool them by the time we went to sleep. The laburnum tree outside the house would be in full bloom then and the street lights would make the flowers look like luminous golden grapes. Oh what freedom it was to sleep under an open sky. The faithful transistor kept going, at low volume now, considering the late hour, and played sentimental hits like ‘Puppy Love’ and ‘Sealed With a Kiss’ on Forces’ Request. The summer nights were too exciting to sleep ever, and while the rest of the family awoke at dawn, when chilly jasmine scented breezes blew, I would lie there fast asleep with a sheet over my face as a protest against an increasingly hot sun.

We children were only allowed out into the garden in the evening after five-thirty, when the heat and the glare had reduced. Then it would be fun to water the plants, and to listen to the hiss that the hot concrete walk made when it was hit by water from the pipe. The smell of that water evaporating off the hot earth or flower pots made us feel like tasting the earth or at least biting into the flower pot.

One doesn’t see oleander trees now like the ones that grew in all gardens then. We children would pluck two of the long leaves and, holding the ends together, we’d bring them close and snap them back to make a loud noise. There was a lovely creeper jasmine with very dark green leaves and flowers that were whitest white on a pale green stem. We’d pluck them when they were still tight buds at five o’clock in the evening, and my mother would bind them into strings for our hair without using a needle at all. She’d then invert a katori over the neatly coiled strings, and within an hour the blooms would open, with a maddening fragrance. We had enough jasmine strings to distribute to most of our neighbours. We’d make a habit of counting the number of buds we plucked, and often it exceeded a thousand!

At fifteen, I sat with my history book open before me, supposedly studying for the Board Exam, but actually looking at the phlox, sweet sultanas, petunias, verbenas and hollyhocks that thrust themselves out of the earth so boisterously! And every bird in the world seemed to be singing in that garden of my childhood, mocking at me who sat indoors!The Delhi in which I learnt to love nature has changed beyond belief, and though I sometimes regret that I’ve left it so far behind me, I'm glad that my daughter, at fifteen, has the same distractions as I had at her age in the place where we now live. 'Ma, I cant study, there's too much to look at in the garden!' she wailed. She will pass it on, I know, this love of the flowers, the seasons, and the rhythms of life.

If you have ever lived in a house with a garden, even one tree, whether spotted out of a car window or during an evening walk ; one flower, one bush in the park, or one bird's song, will bring it all back, all the wonder that you ever felt as a child!