When I was 3, my parents moved to a small town in India. A toddler back then, I was neither reluctant nor excited about a new place.
With all the hustle and bustle of shifting, we all slept quite earlier than usual, wherever we got space in the midst of the clutter of furniture and other household stuff dumped everywhere.
I woke up a bit early in the morning and went right to the garden as early as I could. From a tender age, nature was my swadel of comfort.
It was only natural for a toddler to find a company that can soothe her like a mother. I used to spend quite a lot of time in the lap of my garden. As they say, the more time you spend with someone, the more you long for them. After abandoning my bed in the morning, the first thing I used to do was to visit my garden as religiously as I could.
It was a vast piece of land with a huge bungalow at one side. And a huge gate at its entrance. After entering the gate, there was pavement running to the main door of the house with a large garden on each side. Parallel to the pavement ran shrubs of Champa on both sides.
The right side was slightly bigger than the left. The house had two entrances from the garden. Besides the main door entrance, another opened from inside of the courtyard. The best thing about having two openings was that escaping to the garden became very easy without getting caught by the elders sitting in the living room.
The left side of the garden had more plants and less free space. It had a few flowering plants like hibiscus, a shrub of red roses, Indian frangipani also known as gulaychi, and a few fruit trees like Jamun, pomegranate and a few guava.
While the right side had more space to play and run around, besides having a plethora of floras. It had a few flowering plants like Bougainvillea, Champa, yellow bells etc. And lots of fruit trees, like the Indian jujube, also known as bair, a woodapple or bael tree, a mango tree, a custard apple tree, a few guava trees and a bush of lemon plant.
There was still a small patch available for seasonal veggies my parents loved to grow, like okra, corn, bringals, tomatoes and some leafy veggies like coriander, dill, Fenugreek and other saag.
The best life skill I learned there was climbing trees of all sorts effortlessly. When a child gets comfortable in a tree, a tree becomes a house for her. I used to study under the cool shed of trees, rolling out my straw mat on the bare earth, mesmerized by the humming of birds and chirpings of insects.
Where there are trees there will be rain, flora and fauna. Me and my siblings used to make small toys from soil, soaking our hands in wet mud all day long. We used to plant small saplings and take care of our respective babies till they stand strong. We used to chase dragonflies and butterflies all day long, while catching crickets and fireflies till late at night.
On holidays, dad would teach us painting, gardening, badminton and cycling in and around the garden. While mom would spend late afternoons taking care of her veggie plants. Like any home chefs of modern-day ASMR YouTube videos, mom would pick her own herbs and veggies from the garden.
On rainy days, the garden would flood and we would “jump up and down in muddy puddles” like Peppa does.
Some days when grass grew wild, dad would call our old and eccentric gardener. I loved scraping gardening wisdom out of his skull for hours.
And then came the day like a sad ending, love story. We had to move on to another place, leaving behind my garden, my best friend of 8 lovely years. I was never able to erase those memories out of my mind till now, even after 3 decades. I learned so many life skills there. One of them is keenly observing things and that enhances my creative writing now.
This year I only got a chance to revisit my old friend, my garden, after 3 decades. I was so full of excitement about showing my sons my old friend, but to my grave disappointment, new settlers of the house razed off all the trees, leaving behind bare land.
Not everyone has the same love and excitement for the things you have loved the most. Maybe my sons too will never truly understand the feelings, the emotions and the love their mother had for her childhood friend, her garden.
I sometimes think about the current generation who have never climbed a tree, clinged to a tree, smelled a tree and lived so close to the wonder of nature. I could never truly thank the Almighty for the closeness He blessed me with His nature.
Off the beaten path... 
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