Skip to main content

Going Green

I am someone who don't really have many wants, partly because I don't really know what I want. This posed a problem for my coming birthday. You see, I have a habit of telling my parents and my sisters what I want for my birthday. This saves the trouble of being given things that I would not end up using and not being given things that I needed using.

For my coming birthday, all I needed was a watch as my old one was badly scratched from my frequent tumbling during a skating clinic. That I assigned to my parents. And then my sisters asked me what I wanted, to which I had no answer. I racked my brains but there was nothing that I needed at that point in time that would fall within their budget. And chances were that if I did not tell them anything, they would get me a shirt, and chances are that shirt would just disappear in the pile of shirts overflowing from my cupboard.

And then I had an answer. I wanted a plant.

It was a weird request. Even I did not see it coming. But to some extent it made sense. Sometimes it did get awfully lonely in my room with all the studying. And when I looked around, all I saw was the stares of lifeless human creations. Something green would be nice. Something that freshened the air. Something that breathed.

I asked for one plant, a Japanese Peace Lily. But instead I received an early birthday present in the form of 3 beauties, a Money Plant, a Chinese Evergreen and  a Song of India.



Look at them 
So Evergreen
Just like me

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Eye for an Eye

"Something that three or four years ago you told me was one of the touchstones of maturity: being nice to people even when they’re not nice to you…" - William Styron It was an plan that came out of nowhere. Perhaps half depressed by the winter and half depressed by the inactivity at work, there was sufficient turmoil in the mind to create these type of plans and then let it fester, until something that started off with a what-if turned into a why-not. It would have been the perfect revenge for the past hurt and humiliation that was yet to completely heal.  The circumstances were similar. On one side, an eager visitor who had traveled far to say "Hello" and on the other side, a host, bewildered and surprised by this visit. In the first case, the host would not receive the visitor, who would turn back humiliated and vowing never again. Now the roles were reversed and I was the host. What if I agreed to receive? What if in reality I did not plan to receive? ...

An Ode to Marriage

I remember pondering about the need for marriage during a certain period of my life. Partially inspired by stoicism, I saw a man as an island in a big ocean, continuously being battered by the waves and storms, but holding fort and growing strong with each test. It was also when the idea of monasticism greatly appealed to me, to leave behind, for the lack of a better work, the bullshit of society and trying to attain enlightenment.  Somehow that idea fell apart after a brief meditation stint in a monastery, but the idea of marriage I resisted. The freedom that came from being single seemed too precious to let go. Furthermore life was complicated as it is. Why complicate it further by introducing another person to that life, someone who would bring her own mannerisms, rules, habits, many that might end up conflicting with your own. However, a lot of these ideas and beliefs start to die when friends of yours each start getting into their own relationships and have no more time for yo...

Sparing the Rod

 She gave me a look of deep displeasure, not very atypical of the look most members of the opposite gender gave me. “You know you can’t do that in Germany?”, she asserted with the same authority my mother used to tell me about not messing around in her kitchen.  “Yes I am aware”, I meekly responded, knowing well that any kind of argument about this would not end well, so it was better to close off the topic quietly and unlike the kitchen, I could not afford to get kicked out of Germany. She was not the first to respond with such hostility to what seemed like the most natural of things in my experience. The last one who told me the same was a teacher I had met at a party. When she sounded shocked that I was ok with it and said it was not right, I (with some alcoholic courage) had retorted, “How would you discipline them then if they do something wrong?” “I would tell them I am very disappointed with them”. I almost laughed. However, that was very much the theory of my new frien...