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Standing in the Garden


There standing in the garden,  lay a small plant taking the shape of what looks like almost a palm tree with wide flappy-like leaves which flap themselves as the breeze passes to and fro.

Shaded with a whole array of branches of our ancestral mango tree whose fruits we cherish to the fullest, it looks more like a canopy or a gazebo with a few potted plants surrounding it in the form of a circle, and what appear to be a smaller version of the bushes we have in our garden that border this gazebo, with triangular bricks which could make for a small mini-forest, had there been many more varieties of plants in the same area itself.

The fruits of the palm like plant that make for the gazebo hang from the branches, a cluster of small orange berry like fruits which fill me with wonder and imagination of the name people have given this plant as well as what the taste of them must be, as I’m just filled with curiosity of the bunch full of berries that this plant has been endowed with.

Some years back, when I could distinctly remember, this plant along with another variety of a similar kind used to occupy two of the whole lot of pots we have in the garden, and to see it now occupying a place of it’s own after so many years of being jailed and trapped in a pot is what appears to have brought in the feel of happiness in it as it is more taller than it used to be and besides it even bears fruits which is something that I never in my wildest dreams ever imagined!!

Such has been the true curiosity of my grandparents, with whose efforts and labour led to a beautiful garden we have today of many different varieties of plants we have and whose fondness and keen interest in them kept them busy for years and years, for decades after decades as there was never a moment left behind to capture the wholeness of beauty that this garden was blessed with, and today I, one of the descendants of the family sit in the balcao, gazing at what indeed is a true marvel that we possess!!!

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