Father’s day is not something special to those who miss their fathers. Fathers leave their legacy with us. We may not know and discover after a long time when We become fathers ourselves. Fathers leave something special for their children, consciously or in their unconsciousness.
Table of Contents
My Father Long Ago:
I have said a nice good-bye to my father when I was aged Ten. Well, it was three decades almost and now I can feel the good- bye wasn’t done. There was something left in me that I carry without knowing.
My Father used to be a bus conductor, a state service and often passed the nights in the running buses of long routes. Mother had her own whining but night services used to pay more than the local day services of short routes. It was necessary to earn more for teaching two children in the best school of the town.
Father’s Garden:
But what was surprising for me at that age was father’s garden. He used to bring different species from different places of his visit. Well, he loved flower plants but had never rejected the evergreens and leafy plants. Most of the day I watched him digging soil, making potting mixtures, cutting rose branches and caring all the garden for hours. He used to make compost from kitchen wastes and cow dung dumped at the corner of our ancestral home where I would avoid to visit.
In my early youth I had fallen into poetry and literature and quite confidently had started to believe that wasting time in garden is just wasting your energy and nothing else. But a little of my father was unknowingly left in me. For the last five or six years almost each and everyday the thoughts and sights of my plants give me tremendous happiness and blessings.
My Sustainable Garden:
Urban population hardly manage to get a lot of free space for a nice, fair garden to call it a garden in the true sense of the term. Yet I have seen people growing tomatoes and cucumber in their narrow balconies.
I am lucky enough to have got a space where I grow a bit of summer vegetables like pumpkin, cucumbers after planting trees like mango and olive. I have a tiny interest of growing herbs like aloe, basils, mints, and some indigenous plants like Keya and garlic scented leaves and Peeper Longinum. I let them grow wildly shaping them twice a year.
Yet I don’t neglect flowers. It’s the flowers that call bees and butterflies in your garden. From Dahlias to African daisies ( Gazania), I let my garden bloom in the colourless winters, though not many in numbers but a few.
Plant based Cleaning Products:
My small garden takes not much effort but a care and love for sustainability. All the water from washing machine and dishwasher goes into the garden as I use plant based cleaning products searching and experimenting from different websites. From laundry liquid to toilet cleaner, I use sustainable options. Though it may cost a few dimes more, I know that in the long run, my garden and my plants will be safe from harsh chemicals used in cleaners.
Teaching Sustainability to Children:
As a father, it is my responsibility to teach sustainability to my children and there is no best way to teach things other than practising them. I always grow seeds and plant them roadside taking my daughter with me. Composting kitchen remaining, buying lesser clothes, Using lesser packaged food, caring of the wastage of water, all these that I practise, my daughter imitates. Yes they are the proud moments for a father when my eight year old daughter refuses to take polythene bags from the grocer or teaches her friends to avoid packaged foods. The legacy continues.
Sustainable Father’s Day:
It is not often that You find Your father in Yourself and when You find, it’s truely a moment to be celebrated. Just as I am writing this article,from the other room, my daughter and my son are yelling and laughing and calling me sometimes. They know perhaps that their father would be late to join them, but they have never given up their hope. They will be calling me often. I also call my father silently sometimes. The difference between them and me is that a few of the times I find my father just inside myself.
( IF YOU LIKE IT, PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE AMONG YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS TO SUPPORT SUSTAINABILITY )
(Images used are never intended for copyright violation. We acknowledge sincere gratitude to all the image owners. Featured image courtesy: Everypixel)