Here’s what was happening before.
I try it all. I read online and watch YouTube videos on plant care. I learn the ways in which instruments can be used to measure soil pH, light, and moisture. I look up how to use home tips and tricks to measure soil pH and adjust it as needed. I get the necessary fertilisers and supplements and organic manure. I buy them locally, online from a plant-shop, from a giant eCommerce website. I add onion peel water, I cut the banana peels and bury them, I crack in those eggshells into the soil. I monitor the amount of sunlight we get on the sill. I take one of my flowering plants to the flower bed below my window and plant it there; it might need more space I assume. Then, I adjust the low light plants in low light areas. Yet, I wasn’t having as much success as one would have hoped for the amount of work I was putting in. So, I put up a poll on my Telegram group: Do I need to be a morally good person to be a good gardener?
Desperation does things to people.
Then, I start working on getting myself acquainted with the land of agarbattis. I have no one to ask given my grandmother who lit them being dead many years and even if she were here, not sure exactly how she would help. But I know that I have her agarbatti stand somewhere in the house, so my I focus my energies on the ways to use agarbattis. I have decided that I am going to ward off negative energy that might be interfering with my gardening activities. I may not know many things but I am a good and a quick and an efficient learner. It’s the one quality of mine that I pride myself upon. I love learning now that I am an adult and I can choose what to learn. It brings me the most joy. So, I look up everything on agarbattis. Meanwhile, I light my diffuser. It is such a sham, ok?
Something has gotta give.
I meet a friend after a year who has, right off the bat, started to discuss how we are ‘lacking’ as women because we don’t have partners. Something is wrong with us. We need to fix it. For some strange reason, I don’t correct her. I sit there in front of my fries and wonder aloud, “Yes, what is wrong with me?” “That’s for you to go inside yourself and find out,” she says. I give in to self-pity. Of course, something must be wrong with me that’s why I am yet single and I cannot be married. Everything else about me and my life has just withered and fallen away during that conversation and my self-worth now hangs in the balance of that one missing ingredient because of which I am not married. Maybe I should put another poll on my Telegram group: Do I need to be a perfect woman to be un-singled?
No one has many idea of what is about to happen.
Then, I get Covid. Tested positive. An event I never considered was going to happen to me because I have been so careful and yet, here we are. I have forgotten everything. About the plants. About the negative energies. About the fact that I didn’t tell my friend my self worth isn’t tied to my marital status. About the journal I was to start and the books I had just bought to read. When your own mortality is staring you in the face all this melts away. It all seems meaningless. My friend SS, on learning that I was detected positive remarked very rightly that here you are, normally going about your life, doing your self care, exercising, skincare, meditating, focussing on plants and agarbatti, and then, the next thing you know, life throws a googly at you.
Well, yes, what can you say. The Universe is a bitch.
P.S. This is why I haven’t blogged on the last two weekends, but I will make up for it. Currently wondering if I have the emotional capacity to take part in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) starting tomorrow. Who knows? We will see.
amarllyis 