A transfer in my job relocated me to Bhopal, a city at the heart of India, in October last year and I was lodged in my office’s guest house, Kshitij Bhawan. A common experience of city life is that it leaves us craving for space and a tiny bit of nature. Be it a view of the nearby park or of the blue sky; be it an abundance of daylight or a promise of cool, breezy nights – a slice of nature is uppermost in our minds while buying a house or booking a condo in a crowded metropolis.

But that upcoming flat at the top floor corner or that under-construction house promising a touch of nature is scarce and what is scarce is expensive – nature is a luxury away from where it is in plenty.

Thankfully, the offices and the townships of my company, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, were built in big cities such as Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Bhopal more than 50 years ago with green spaces over large tracts of land.

Yet considering the present day realities, I cannot help but be grateful when I find that the guest house at Bhopal where I would be staying for some time has a sprawling surrounding with a lawn hedged with plants, and a garden of roses and palm in the front, and banana, mango and jackfruit trees in the backyard. Here birds chirp and insects buzz from the branches of the trees, and cars whir in the streets at a distance, composing a day’s noise in an atmosphere of calm and peace.

At the time I came here, it was the onset of winter and the chill just began to set in. The unhurried pace of life and the weather ensured that I had a good night’s sleep before daylight entered my room to wake me up for the morning. A few days into my stay, one fine morning, however, ‘thhak thhak thhak…’ sound of someone cutting a branch of a tree awoke me from my sleep. I got up from my bed and went to the balcony of my room on the first floor, which overlooked the lawn in the front, to behold the whole scene.

A senior colleague of mine, Mr. Prakash Vir, whom I made acquaintance with the other day, climbed the tree a few feet above the ground and was chopping a branch with an axe, standing on the main stem where it split into boughs. Mr. Vir holds a senior position as an Additional General Manager in my office at Bhopal.

I went down to the ground.
‘Good morning!’ I greeted him and asked, ‘What are you doing, Sir?’
‘Pruning,’ he gave a short reply and swung the axe and went on chopping  the branch.

Colleagues and the canteen staff told me later that he had single handedly raised a wide variety of plants including a clump of banana trees around the guest house. And all the tools for this such as spade, hoe, axe, trowel and barrow were available with him and he did the digging, filling, levelling up of the earth all by himself.

I made a detour of the guest house to see what he had grown. The lodge is closed on all sides by boundary walls but there are spaces between the wings, and between the building and the boundary wall in the back. I discovered in those spaces roses, jasmines, cryosanthemum, oleander, graveyard flower and hibiscus in bloom – the plants  carrying flowers in scarlet, white, yellow and pink hues amidst thick green foliages. The banana clumps have about thirty plants of which one or two have flowered and are bearing bunches of green bananas.

Trees of guava, jamun, lemon, sweet lime, fig, chiku, amla, jackfruit and pomegranate are rising with vigour with new branches growing in all directions. Pomegranate, lemon, fig and guava fruits are visibly hanging from the branches while I could see fruits beginning to show up in jamun, and chiku trees. Besides, there are lemongrass and thickets of bamboo, lending a varied look to the garden.

As days passed and I saw Mr. Vir work around the lodge, I was filled with awe and disbelief. He spends all his time before and after office hours in the garden. And while holidays are for housework and rest for most of us, for him, they are for the upkeep of the plants.

On holidays, he walks down to the ground with his tools in the morning. And as the day wears on; as birds forage on the ground, perch on the branches and chirp, quench their thirst in a nearby drain and make several sorties in between; and as butterflies flit about the flowers and leaves, he works there for hours and hours, calm and unhurried, digging the earth, softening it, cutting channels for irrigating the plants and watering them, inspired by the love of nature, by the prospect of flowers, fruits and by all the sights, smell and sounds that it offers. Lunch break is a brief interlude between the morning and afternoon hours of work, and it is only after sunset that he relents and calls it a day.

The thought of featuring him in my blog has been bubbling up in my mind for quite some time. One day when I broached the idea with him, he agreed readily to it and was very forthcoming about what led him to this passion and what he did to give expression to it.

A Mechanical Engineering graduate from IIT – Delhi, Mr. Prakash Vir had served this organisation at its Delhi office for more than 25 years before he was transferred to the Bhopal office two years ago. He had closely seen agricultural activities during his childhood days at Agra, but it was not until the recent Coronavirus pandemic that he got seriously involved in gardening.

He utilized the free time available then to do rooftop gardening at his residence at Noida. Then an official transfer landed him here two years ago, and all that is being written about here is the outcome of his herculean efforts since then.

I was curious about the secret of his physical ability and the inspiration behind the hard labour. In the course of conversation, he reveals that his strength and stamina have been developed by another passion  – trekking, which until recently he did once every year in the Himalayas. It is indeed the training he underwent before trekking that has made him fit and strong.

Mountains hold an irresistible charm for him. Interestingly, the love of nature, which made him go trekking in the Himalayas, is the common thread through his pastime of gardening. He does both with equal intensity.

When he came here two years ago, preparing the ground proved to be a challenge. The land was raised by builders by depositing rubble. Mr. Vir had truckloads of rubble removed and transported away and got the ground refilled with soil rich in nutrients from outside.

Mr. Vir showed me some special plants in the garden, which I was not familiar with – cherry and grapevines. The gravevines are climbing a frame of iron rods, which has been arranged by him, and the cherry plant is bushy with luscious leaves and looks ready to blossom the next season.

‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ –  a garden is a thing of beauty that gives us joy in the present and also in the future in remembrance. Nature assumes various forms in the yearly cycle of seasons, the spring bringing the best out of her. But a garden gives the feeling of spring throughout the year with its colourful blooms, aromatic plants, and with bees humming and butterflies flying around. And the one who helps create this feeling perhaps has a greater joy than anyone who simply beholds it. In this respect, what Mr. Vir does is inspirational – he inspires me to take care of plants and preserve nature in whatever little way I can.