See'ed Saw'ed

When I was a kid, our house in Subhanpura, Baroda (Vadodara, or Banyan-in-the-tummy city) had a nice garden... To set expectations right, it was around 25 ft x 10 ft; not huge, but big enough to fuel a child's fantasy. Now, there was this seed peddler who used to come on a bicycle with a rectangular "hold-all" military green bag, full of white sachets of seeds, tied to the carrier. Nothing great, told my mind to me, boring looking sachets with tiny equally uninteresting seeds.

Then one day, he brought seed sachets, which had colorful pictures of the vegetable or flower that it promised to deliver in due course. It kick-started my curiosity and my fascination with those sachets. Mom would buy some 10-20 of them - tomatoes, peas, marigold, chillies... and stack them up on the rack besides the bed. At first opportunity, I'd take them out, lay them side by side on the bed, like you do a pack of cards, look at the bright pictures of flaming red tomatoes, seemingly innocuous green chillies, peacefully yellow marigolds and sunflowers, and wonder when our garden will bloom with such life and green.

Well, the garden remained largely the same. Those tiny lemons never tasted any better than bought ones. Brinjals never turned purple like the sachet had promised. The tomatoes were always the worst letdown - the plant never bore any tomatoes! I kept imagining for a while and then gave up. Mom kept buying for a while and then gave in. Dad went and hired a 'maali' who changed the garden over to lots of easy-to-grow greens and no vegetables - money plant, office flowers, and others that I don't know the name of. However, he knew his roses well... and boy, did we have one great winter when those five rose plants were on a roll churning out gifts by the dozen every week!

Agreed, there's no point. But, seeing those tiny seeds in splendid sachets gave me the kicks... and they were fun to play with.

I weed weed
I need seed
I did deed
I Saw'ed See'ed
(Shut up, stupid,
'ere you become a kid)