I am driving back home, it is a rainy day, and the clouds loom threateningly, pouring an endless barrage of milky grey raindrops, reflecting the mournful absence of colour in the sky. Nature soon takes care of that, by dropping a single one of its green minstrels from the trees, on the car’s windshield. A solitary green leaf. Inside this leaf lies a story, in a world that is in no way identical to ours right now.
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Dust. Being everywhere, it was always in motion, and how could it not be, with a milling crowd of people around me? My mother being one of them, greedily hastening towards the new season’s harvest, the harvest of ‘Pongal’.
Like a shopper sighting a new sale, the hypnotised crowd headed off to the vegetable market, which in their mind, was pure bliss. Lentils of every kind, as far as the eye could see, each covered in nature’s protection pod. I was pushed into a world of peculiarly shaped legumes, one couldn’t even fathom, existed. I became part of the crowd, brushing shoulders frequently and occasionally elbowed and jabbed by both man and vegetable alike. Long red carrots, threateningly poked my sides and acted as rapiers. There was intense activity in the dust-filled air, throughout the marketplace, and the earthy smell of root veggies only seemed to amplify the shoppers’ frenzy. I should have waited outside with the lanky sugarcanes, their leafy hairdos were waving and fluttering vigorously in the wind. The market was still a cesspool of people’s shiny black heads. I did not understand their obsession with overrated vegetables like eggplants; their shiny purple allure failed to penetrate me, as did the ladies' fingers, beckoning to me with their siren calls.
The great big sea of people and vegetables alike were all headed to the billing counter, ready to round up their spring harvest. All except my mother, who sent me on a lofty quest, to get her missing coriander. Finding a needle in a haystack was nothing compared to this. There I stood, pondering in front of a heap of green leaves. With a so-called ‘educated’ guess, I took one of the leafy bundles and handed it to my mother. She did not take it well and gave me a lecture in front of all the world in the market. Embarrassment, the sly, unwanted creature came hanging along with her words, and gave my face the colour of a furious fuchsia, rivalling that of the eggplants in the nearby row. I had given her curry leaves instead of coriander.
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The mighty downpour seems to have ended, parting with a graceful rainbow delicately drawn across the sky. I drive past mountains of landfills, and bare pieces of land, stripped of their dense foliage towards my skyscraper residence. Enter a world that needs help to catch up with the fast-paced development and automation.
I take a look at the bag of groceries in the backseat—a little bundle of green points out.
Fresh coriander, which is going into my mixed vegetable stew tonight.
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