Hari 2: More Tales of Our Garden

The sparse monsoon is beginning to show on the brown grass. The rain has been absent and so has Hari the gardener.

I can see weeds propagating in comfortable patches, like they don’t expect to be disturbed. The leaves on the roses are chewed through. There are aphids on the guava tree. The leaves on the jasmine and hibiscus are curling unhappily from some invasion.

I’ve long suspected that Hari has no real hands-on knowledge of plants. His horticultural skills are limited to sweeping fallen leaves and tonsuring the grass when it becomes overgrown. He claims he grew up on a farm but I find it hard to believe he is a son of the soil.

I have to show him how to prune bushes and transplant saplings. I have to pull off aphids and squeeze them to show him that it isn't a gust of "bad air" that has my jasmine leaves shriveling. He cannot identify common weeds or secretly collaborates with them. “Oh, you don’t want these flowers?’’ he’ll say. I tell him the plant in question is a non-flowering weed that has now grown to over a foot high and is multiplying itself. “Na-ah,” he’ll say mysteriously. “Wait some more. It’s not a weed. It’ll give flowers.”

Hari colludes with weeds until they overrun the garden. Then he announces the garden will die without herbicides. I deliver an ultimatum and no herbicides. Then one day Hari recruits his wife, cousins and neighbors to squat in little circles and stab the grass with weed-pullers that look like big flat-pin screwdrivers. Piles of weeds, enough to stock a morbid florist for weeks, are displayed as trophies of his unappreciated devotion to our garden.

We go through this dramatic routine at the end of every month. Then Hari goes on his weed-pulling frenzy so that he can avoid being ticked off and threatened with unemployment when he shows up to collect his pay.

I’ve felt tempted to get another gardener. But I feel responsible for Hari. He has four children to raise in the city and a mother in his village home he sends money to because none of his brothers help her out. He shows up regularly and is honest and good-natured. If I replace him, the new guy could be a jerk and Hari’s kids might have to drop out of school because he certainly won’t be able to pay their tuition fees.

He is clueless about his work, but at least earnest. So it would be fair to say my compassion for our gardener has come at the expense of my compassion for our ailing garden.

Hari has a single, undeviating diagnosis for everything that ails our garden at any time of the year: Kida (bugs, worms).

Kida hiding under the ground are eating the roots of the grass. Kida are eating the leaves that are punctured with holes. Kida are sabotaging his work.

Hari also has one same magical prescription for banning all these ills: "Yirya complice" and "por-eight".

The first time he made this request, I asked him again and again what these were. He couldn't spell them or write them in a language I understood. "Medicine, madam," he would repeat as I shook my head uncomprehendingly. "Medicine for plants. Haven't you used it ever?"

Finally, I decided to drive to a seed and fertilizer shop nearby with him so he could show me what these were.

The shop was divided in two. The glass-fronted half stocked mobile phones. The open half sold farm supplies.

The shop reeked of death and disfigurement. My eyes stung and I could feel minutes peeling off my life span as I scanned the stock.

There were bags and sacks of chemicals with skull and bones symbols and serious health warnings. It was a mini-mart peddling poisons in pellets, powders and bottles. The contents all cautioned they are to be mixed in very small concentrations and handled with protective clothing and masks. Yet laborers who apply these lethal chemicals are often barefoot and have obviously not been supplied basic protective gear by their employers.

That is how easily you can shop death in India. It's practically as easy as buying handguns in America.

In a farm store, you don't show any IDs and you can buy anything toxic that takes your fancy: Malathion, DDT, any of the polysyllabically named poisons that are banned in the United States and Europe, are all available cheaply.

Hari picked out what he wanted: Urea complex and Phorate.

I read the labels and had the store clerk put them back. Instead, I bought a bag of compost.

Hari was downcast. I had chosen kida over him. “All your neighbors are using medicines,” he pleaded as we loaded the compost in the trunk of my car.

“These are not medicines,” I interrupted righteously. “They are poisons.”

“How can that be madam? Can the government allow the selling of poison?” I marvelled at his such faith in India's government and let him know we were done shopping.

Back home, I Googled Hari’s wish list of chemicals. Phorate is a relative of nerve gas. Urea compounds are used to fertilize soils but high concentrations can irritate the skin, eyes and respiratory tract.

There are many important reasons not to buy them. Hari’s health. My children playing ball with their friends. The birds that visit my garden.

Hari has come around to accept my irrational dislike for his "medicines" and I've grown to accept his inability to tell desirable vegetation apart from weeds.

Brown is the color of my garden’s good health this year. I’ll pretend the subdued looking grass is a sign of the fall colors I miss.