Connecting with Nature

A fond memory of my early childhood in Ahmedabad was going for morning walks  with my grandfather when schools closed for summer.  We stayed at the government quarters near the panjra pol in Ambavadi  area then ( Dad being a ‘sarkari karmachari’) and we would walk past the Azad Society to the Mangaldas bungalow and turn towards the’ kutcha’ road that led to the IIM and ATIRA.  My favourite pastime during this walk was to gather frangipani and other flowers  that had fallen off trees and to spend time watching  the turtles and the small fishes at the water tank in Atira with great delight.  Atira and the IIM area had many big trees then and the fragrance of sweet summer blooms   hung heavily around the air.  It was here that I made my first connection with Nature.

 Soon after Gandhinagar was born as the capital city of Gujarat and we moved on there with Dad’s posting at the Secretariat.  Gandhinagar in those days was lush, with many  green fields,  huge mango and  neem  trees in abundance.   There were huge open spaces all around and most people  nurtured their  own patch of green  around the house. We too had our little green space  in  front and the backyard of our house.  My grandfather had green fingers and  soon we had dahlias, zinnias, marigolds and jasmine flowers blooming in our little front garden. Okra, pumpkin, brinjals and tomatoes  grew with a flourish in our backyard.  I enjoyed pottering around the garden with my grandfather, working with the soil, watering the plants and pulling out  weeds from our perfectly made brick rows for the plants.

The kid gang  I belonged to was also always on its toes…a boy in particular had a special knack in finding some rare species of trees…that was always oohed and aahed by the elders.  Others like me were more interested in catching the red velvety bugs  we found after the rains and in providing them  with homes in little match and other boxes that we could lay our hands on.  We filled these boxes with soil, uprooted some grass from the earth, planted  them into the boxes thinking we now had given the little fellows a cosy home!  One particular day we  lustily caught many such bugs and gathered them in my skirt without me realizing that they would  crawl all over me!  The shriek I gave then and the laugh of my comrades- in-arm still rings loud in my ears!!   

Walking through lush green fields to reach the newly opened  St. Xavier’s primary school in sector 20 along with two of our teachers still remains a fresh memory.  A  transport system wasn’t in place then and private vehicles  were few. Often while returning home  from school we kids would hop on to some bullock or camel cart as our legs ached with the long walk back home to sector 17 we then lived. In spite of this I loved Gandhinagar for its green landscape.

During summers we had the privilege of having the choicest of mangoes,  plucked directly from the  trees, at bargain prices. We also stole little green mangoes from the park trees that we played in.  We also plucked jamuns, fresh figs and  yellow berries called ‘rayan’ off the trees in the neighbourhood  and were promptly shooed off some elder telling us that  ghosts lived on those trees! 

I stayed in Gandhinagar till I completed my class VIII and when I returned to it  later after a gap of seven-eight years, it was a pale self of the green Gandhinagar I had known.  Even then I always had my first cup of morning tea strolling around in my garden taking in every little leaf or bud that had grown.   Alas, I had to move back to Ahmedabad again and the only plants I now see are the potted ones, at home. But despite my Amdavadi  friends calling Gandhinagar  a ‘dead city’ or a ‘Babu town’ I still have a soft corner for Gandhinagar even though it is on its way to becoming  another concrete jungle!