Connecting with my Own Self | Kritika's Reflection

Contributor: Kritika Kedia

When I was a child I always wanted to grow different plants in our house. We lived in a village and in those days plant Nurseries has not reached villages. So I used to go around the neighborhood to collect plant cuttings, saplings, seeds and certain types of plant leaves from which plant can re generate to grow into a new healthy plant. I learnt the science (different styles) of plant re-generation by doing this. But since my parents wanted me to focus on school studies and they didn’t like me ‘wasting time’ time on practical learning I learnt doing something I loved. Well I can’t blame them for this notion as in our society even today excellent education means mugging up bookish knowledge without even connecting them to the reality or any practical exposure.

I left gardening due to ‘studies’ still I was very proud of my interest and wanted to restart it after completing my board exams. But alas this feeling lasted till I went to college because if by mistake I told people that my hobby is gardening then they will ask me to tell the name of any plants that came along our way. And if you are not able to tell that they will mock you as if loving gardening means to be a plant encyclopedia. (I am sure you all most have experienced similar situation in your life). So I was really confused about my hobby and nearly forgot it till April of this year. (Although, secretly deep inside I always dreamt of having a big organic vegetable farm in future.) Really social conditioning and peer pressure can sometime ruin some personal interest sometime till the internal transformation within oneself happens.

              

   

                   

This year moving to Nagpur, away from people who potentially might judge or mock me (with added benefit of having 2 balconies) I decided to restart gardening again. Initially my hubby didn’t like the idea of having plants in the balcony so I started with 4 plants. Slowly I used some discarded plastic bottles, some seeds (tomato, karela, pumpkin, garlic) from my kitchen scraps and some spice seeds (like coriander, methi, cumin, mustard, ajwain, etc) to start my gardening experiments. Some tiny plants used to emerge but it used to die small so I encountered almost no success. After first 2 months of continuous failure came the monsoon. I tried again with some seeds and plants cutting. This time rain water did the magic and most of plant blossomed which taught me 2 important life lessons. First, everyone’s time comes to blossom- to succeed, for someone it may come early and for some it may get late but everyone will surely succeed. Second and the most important is that one’s surrounding, conditioning and support plays very important role to come out in flying colour. Even the discarded plastic bottle and kitchen scraps added beauty to my garden provided I up cycled them seeing the hidden worth in them. But honestly, how often without any personal need we acknowledge someone and be ladder for them to succeed?

There are plenty other life lessons I learnt from this small hobby and if I start noting it here it will be a too long list. So I will list only a couple of them:

· Nobody grows to full size in a day. From being very small one day we through years of accepting the surroundings, determination, learning (manure), guidance we eventually grow big. One who is not able up with this, dies mid-way.

· Unity and seeking help from surrounding in times of need is very necessary (from climbers). Once you get that support its time to be grateful and give your best shot

· Never judge anyone by how they look

· It’s ok if you don’t know much, still you can share whatever you know. There are many others who may benefit from your experience. So proudly share.