The Gardener

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 THE GARDENER

 I am Madhusudan and people call me Madhu or maali bhai. I am a gardener in this big MNC campus. My day starts early in the morning when I come for pruning the shrubs and manuring the trees. All these huge flowers are my handiwork and gifts of God. This carpet of grass over which you luckily are not allowed to walk is my year long effort. I grow ornamental plants and plants that flower, evergreen trees of pine and I grow jack fruit and coconut. This garden is my home and my hard work and when you look at it and admire some exotic breed, it is my true reward more than the money that I get.  It is a very big company and buildings are twelve storey high. Slick and painted with solar panel fitted I like this company and when it grows. Though I am not to enter these buildings. My garden is only a status symbol for one and all to admire. It is not the life growing in my garden but the money growing in the company that matters. When I started off, I would wear a shirt of my own and had no uniform but as the infrastructure grew they made me wear a uniform too. 

Let me give you a short tour. You enter through the main gate and there is a road made for you and there are gardens around on both sides. As you walk in you see your path and on both sides are the garden. There are beautiful dustbins shaped like rabbits and kangaroos, there is a small decorative building at its centre fitted with a swing. And the central attraction is a fountain with multiple lights that dance in the evening. And an artificial pond whose fish I tend to. This is a prosperous place and I am its gardener. I work for eight hours a day and go home.

My home is in a slum where I live in an overcrowded locality. I live in a single room with my wife and five children. They all go to school. I want to make them like those smart officers in the company. My wife works as a house hold help. In a corner of my house lays a mud stove and in other corner our bed. There is no kitchen and the roof is leaking so that rains are the toughest. The government has built some toilets and there are crowded. This is for the entire slum to use. Water comes from municipality and there is no water filter at home. My children attend a shabby government school where they do get midday meals and rice for home. I spend my evening by a temple where I enjoy singing and listening to bhajans (religious songs) and hanging out with friends and go home, eat my dinner at night and go to bed. My morning takes me back to the garden.  

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