Home grown!

My grandfather was a freedom fighter and lived most of his life in a village barring few trips to a nearby town for an occasional movie. Yes, the good old black and white movies where the script and lyrics were more important than actors and music.After settling all his children he still stays in his village despite all of us inviting him to our homes. Every morning he wakes up early, takes a walk, collects milk from his cattle yard and then is fresh and ready by the time we usually wake up. He has a small piece of land where he grows paddy and toiled on his own. You might not believe it but he is more fitter than I am now!

Change of scene when he visits his daughter, my mother and it is fun to watch him fuss around the house with our comfort, if we are misguided to think it is, and keeps telling us what to do and what not. A part of him still looks at us as grand children who grew up on his shoulders in summers and accompanied to the fields for trips constantly asking him lots of questions to which he patiently answered. I love spending time with him as he is better than wikipedia!

When he saw our small home garden my mom tends to, he gets going. He cleans it, touches the plants, rips off leaves, adjusts the angles, provides support and weeds it while continuously telling us which plants to keep and why we should have tulsi leaves with tea, keep digging the soil and what natural manure we should use and so on. He doesn't mind eating brinjals every day of the week if it is from our garden. Every time he has the first morsel, we know what happens. If it is from our garden for him it tastes better and if it is from the supermarket, it doesn't. He can even taste plastic in which it is packed and pesticides and overall unhealthy feeling.

Over the years after I moved out of home for studies and years of living in hostels, I yearn for my mom's food. Don't know how many times, I had posted about my mom's food on facebook and orkut and how many likes I got :)

Every once in a while when someone is coming from home, I get a dabba. Home cooked food from mom and trust me there is nothing better. May be I have grown to appreciate it more now but it tastes 100 times better than the food I have had in the best of hotels. I don't have the measure but it tastes much better when the vegetables are from my home garden. I know it is healthy, tastes better, is cooked with love and affection. I also know it is smarter and more eco-friendly than what I buy from the supermarket.

At Samskruti, we want you to get an opportunity to have small happy moments that you miss or have no time for. Every home @Samskruti, either in Maurya or Hoysala or Indus Valley, have an option to have a terrace garden or a roof-top garden where you can grow vegetables, flowering plants and even fruits. This is not just for decorative purposes but for more aesthetic purposes than one.

You can teach your children, like we learnt and appreciate now more than ever, where their food comes from and how much effort goes into that. Research suggests that gardening is an excellent therapeutic tool and if it comes with several advantages, then why not! Skip the supermarket option and see if you can grow something in your backyard. More than the money you save, the joy you would get out of this would be priceless.