Lately, I had developed a strange hobby. I became an in-house farmer, nurturing a Basil plant inside my house.

Perched near the window and in full blossom, it casts a stereotype appearance to the modern drawing room setting.

Some had asked me this question, ‘Why are you growing it inside the house? Isn’t that an outdoor plant?’

Well, not that I wasn’t aware of. I was doing it on purpose.

This summer, I had a couple of purchases of this plant. I had planted them in the balcony and had them shaded too, but, they withered away due to the scorching summer heat.

So you see, my concern was to protect them from the heat.

But the nature has its own ways, which might look strange to us.

As a gnat getting attracted to the lamp, the plant started to grow to the outside, bending towards the window. It demanded the sunlight. It’s right to survive by photosynthesis. That’s the way how nature defines the flora.

But, do you think this is all what a plant does?

If you say YES, then, I’m sorry, you are WRONG. There is something more that a plant would demand for.

For this, you would want to check on my younger days.

Back in the 2000s, in Bangalore, we had a verandah full of pots. Pots that had plants and pots that were empty. Infact, there were so many empty pots that some of our friends used to take pots to their houses. They would just walk in and pick up a pot as if we had kept it for a garage sale. But I had no complaints, our family had always nurtured greenery.

That would always remind me that I’am from Bangalore, a city which had its tryst with nature.

There was one rose plant that was potted outside our room. We could see that grow from our window. My mom was particularly worried of the small kids playing in the neighborhood, who believed it is better to dissect the flower than plucking it. That thought would make my mom nervous, and on one occasion when a flower mysteriously disappeared, she came time and said, ‘Boy, I would want you to check if anyone plucks it. Just give them a rap on their head’. My mom wanted me to become a terrier.

I didn’t turn out to be a security guard in my career, I opted music as a hobby instead.

Back then, when the radio revolution boomed in the 2000s, one could find everyone listening to radio. Mobile phones were still at its infancy. You could find young men glued to their radio kits. Even older men, who probably, would have a few years in their quota of life, would be seen listening to radio. Our locality had multiple shops and as I walk in my street, I could hear each shop playing their own station, blaring out loud from their speakers. With all those music played around from every corner of the street, it gave you a sense that Vinayak Chaturthi had come early.

There was one station which impressed me and my brother. It was Radio City. RJ Rohit Barker and DJ Ivan used to say that it was Bangalore’s number one radio station. Infact, it was, and it played only the best English songs. Best ever.

Oasis, Cold Play, Backstreet Boys, Boyzone. You name it and they played it. Such was it’s popularity that it had a separate weekend session for Club music.

As they say, ‘when you are green, you are growing’, those were the days to remember and we lived as if we would live a life without an end. But, there was something else that was growing with us. The rose plant.

Unbeknown to anyone, the rose plant grew listening to our music. Our radio was near the window and it grew towards the inside, into our room that we had difficulty in closing the window.

We soon realised that although it required photosynthesis, it also needed music to grow. But all this, was a fathomless assumption at that time. How it became attracted to music was still a mystery. We’ve heard that cows produced a lot of milk when they heard pleasant music. Did that mean, this plant would produce more flowers, which would make my mom happy?

Much later, I had read in some article that plants listen to music in the frequency range of less than 250 Hz. It said, they find it close to the sounds of nature.

It had sounded daft to me back then. I later realised maybe it’s true, because, as per that article, plants like mild music and that’s what we always played.

Heavy metal was never our favorite. I sometimes imagine, if we had ever played thrash metal, the plant would have shed its flowers, and mom would have blamed the poor kids for no reason.

But, mom never had her dream fulfilled. It never produced more flowers as we had expected, but, just one. The plant was infected with some tiny black insects that it withered away, thus ending the plants romance with music.

Strange all this may sound, but today, this Basil plant makes me feel happy, as it reminded me their strange ways, where I have seen them grow both inside and outside my premises. It doesn’t leave me perplexed, but, brings me closer to them.