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Tuesday 20 October 2015

The real joy of togetherness

Life throws us into unexpected events all the time for me togetherness is that magic wand that prepares us to face life as it comes.
Those golden days of yore are no more when people had plenty of time to spare and share with their loved ones. This resulted in an impeccable bonding that was cemented fast with the glue of love caring and sharing and it was truly the real joy of togetherness. Over the passage of time and with the advent of new technologies specially the mobile phone time has become in short supply. It is not that the time has started moving faster as the clock still ticks at the same old rate but its only us the people who are so busy that we do not have the time to bond and connect with all those who matter,our loved ones, all those near and dear and our neighbors.
I still remember that when I was a child the members of our household had plenty of time to indulge in sharing of information news and various activity. The evenings were the most lively and interesting part of the day as I got to interact with my grandfather who was a cloth merchant. With the falling of dusk he came home and now it was time for me and him to spend some quality time together. These moments of togetherness when he shared the anecdotes of the day used to be the most prized moments for me that I still cherish to this day. As night fell it was time for my grandmother to tell me stories from the Ramayana. These moments were full of her love and caring for me.
In those days we used to live in the walled city of Delhi and the houses were so closely packed that had no space for a real garden. My grandfather was very fond of gardening and seeing my interest he ordered some pots and seeds. One evening when he came home I found a man accompanying him with a donkey in tow. On one side of the donkey was a sack full of soft yellow soil and on the other side were brightly colored earthen pot. He asked me to fill the pots with soft fertile soil which he had brought along with the pots. I still remember the touch of that soft cool soil as filled the pots with the soil that my grandfather had brought. He then took out a packet of seeds from his pocket and showed me how to plant a seed by making a small hole in the mud and putting a few seeds in it and then covering it with mud. The final step was to water the pot. He assigned to me the duty of watering the pots every day and advised me to be careful and not flood the pots with water .These were the first steps for me in learning how to grow and care for the plants. Now me and my grandfather used to tend to our plants everyday and he asked me to maintain a notebook to maintain and record the growth history of the plant. When I saw the green first leaves emerge out of the seeds I got very excited. I ran to my grandfather to give him the news.


Apparently it was an ordinary natural process but for me it was no less then shear magic unfolding before my eyes. In the beginning we were the only two tending to the plants but slowly we found all the family members gathering around us when we were tending to the plants. Everyone got involved in this gardening activity and this getting together was just like party time with lots of smiles and jokes being shared. As I grew up I moved out from the walled city now there was plenty of space but no time.
Life was now becoming mechanical and lacked the warmth of togetherness. Now I realized that my life was losing its touch with relationships. I thought that I must do something to change this and as I remembered my childhood days when gardening had connected the whole family together I went to the unattended plot of land in front of my house into a garden. Watching me work in this garden made the children of our family curious and soon they joined me in my endeavors. I found that our gardening team grew in leaps and bounds as the neighboring children too plunged into the activity. Once the children got involved their parents also pitched in. I found that this was a very good way of getting to know and interacting with the neighbors. Due to the combined efforts the plants bloomed and were loaded with fruits and flowers however for us these fruits were not the only reward. We were also rewarded in terms of experiencing the real joy of togetherness. Nature has helped us in securing a perennial bond


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