I planted some rose bushes, a few aloe vera and chrysanthemum plants. All of them died. Then I, very ambitiously, planted a butter fruit seed. It lost its life after growing to be a healthy plant of about my height when somebody decided it was a mere weed and stifled it with heaps of dry twigs and leaves.
Thus ended my gardening. I wondered how weeds grew so abundantly without any added nutrition or care in the same soil.
It was only yesterday that I could think of a reason. The weeds were free. They grew where they wanted, when they liked. No human conditioned their growth. The soil was theirs, the water and the sun.
We plant a seed with love, take care of it with love.
But I realise now that freedom is infinitely more necessary than love.
'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares?
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