Immediately after my grueling training of one year in Mumbai, I got my job posting at a remote dusty corner of Rajasthan, called Rawatbhata. The periphery of nearest town Kota was 60 kilometer away. The distance in numerical terms could be very misleading to appreciate the nearness or farness. The only public mode of transport was one ramshackle private bus playing multiple roles of goods carrier, cattle transport, milk carrier; carrying anything man would like to transport limited to capability of it’s four wheels and the shaking structure. Till some years back Rawatbhata was a sleepy village on the banks of river Chambal. Now, the Chambal River has been disciplined by a huge dam into a blue quiet lake submerging a vast area which was a forest of thorny trees. The residents of those submerged forests, rabbits, deers, nilgais, leopards and of course the villagers have been replaced by fishes and gharials thriving happily in the blue tranquil water of the lake.

I lived always in a metro city; so Rawatbhata being a village was a difficult for me to adjust. Initially I felt frustrated, but slowly started admiring the beauty of the nature and friends among the people living there. The situation improved for better when I was allotted a flat in the residential colony situated on the top of a flat hill on the lakeside. I got the freedom to live in my own way.

The flat was on the ground floor with a reasonably big courtyard at the back. Being a city bred man, I always nurtured a wish to do gardening with my own hands someday. The courtyard could have become a means to realize my dream, but our planners had a different view about the free space. They covered the courtyard with concrete leaving only small strips of natural soil on the periphery. I felt that I should be happy with the little strips of soil to start with. So I started gardening with some flowering plants.

In the beginning of the rainy season I happened to throw some kitchen waste containing some vegetable plant seeds in that small strip of soil. By nature’s design many seeds germinated and many tiny plants started taking shape. One of them was growing very enthusiastically. I could make it was a pumpkin plant. I was quite excited about it.

The virgin soil had plenty of nutrients hidden in it. Coupled with that, good timely rain helped the plant grow very fast, branching out merrily in all directions. Soon it occupied the entire courtyard. I could not see a bit of the concrete below, only huge hairy dark green leaves with white patterns written on it. The bright sunlight after a rain illuminating the greenery in front of my eyes was nothing short of a visual treat. I was very happy with the great rewarding result of my gardening venture.

Every morning I got up and looked out of the window to see how many beautiful orange colored flowers bloomed. The flowers were really big. The fresh petals with small dewdrops on them filled my mind with a great sense of happiness and also a sense of achievement. As the day passed those flowers became gloomy, shrunk and lifeless, announcing they had done their part of duty and ready to go. In the next few days, these old flowers simply decayed to nothing.

I noticed that for a handful of flowers, a small bulb at the bottom survived for some days, but finally those also succumbed to the same fate. My academic knowledge said that those female flowers were not pollinated. Somehow pollination was not taking place, the insects were not paying proper attention to my pumpkin plant. So I decided to do the work of the insects myself. With a cotton bud in hand I looked for the female flowers and pollinated them with pollen from the male flowers. After quite a few attempts, I noticed a bulb survived and started growing slowly. A new life had come into existence.  I was once again filled with an overpowering sense of achievement and joy. Soon I became obsessed with observing every now and then, concerned about the well being of the new born. I thought the hot concrete might be troubling the baby pumpkin. So I inserted a layer of dry leaves below. I was happy to provide some comfort to it. I got into the role of a caregiver to the little baby pumpkin. My attachment to that became quite strong. In the morning after getting up, the urge of having a look at the baby was uncontrollable. The same was true when I returned back from work.

In Rawatbhata, the rainy season did not last long. As rains receded, the sun started dominating again. We used to call this period immediately after the monsoon as second summer. The soaring day temperature had a telling effect on my pumpkin plant. It started shrinking. Big leaves disappeared, only small pale leaves remained. All the branches started dyeing out. The baby pumpkin has by this time has become a healthy full grown pumpkin but still some days away from full maturity. I never tried to look for any pattern in how the plant was shrinking. But one day it was too obvious to notice that all the branches of the plant had perished except the branch bearing the fruit. It survived like a lifeline with meager resources to feed the new life to its full maturity. The big courtyard, which was once fully covered with lush green leaves with no trace of underlying concrete visible, now lay bare with a lonely pumpkin and a thin branch with barely any leaves connecting it to the root a few yards away.

One morning, I thought the pumpkin had matured enough and keeping it on the hot concrete for a few more days may ruin it. So I detached it from the branch and brought it inside. To my amazement, in the next two days the branch simply died; silently stating that it was living with the sole purpose of nurturing the baby to its maturity. It was quite heartbreaking for me as I developed a kind of bond with the life process. I was overwhelmed by the cycle of life which I happen to witness so intimately. Seed growing into a huge plant to bear fruits and to die off once another cycle of life is ready to take off. The very purpose of life is to keep the cycle of life going.