Selvaraj began working in our community in early nineties. Project Vikas was just launched and among the many 'mud workers' who came to dig for the foundation Selvaraj was one. In time the project was completed and all the mud workers left, but Selvaraj stayed on to take care of the gardens. He became our official 'gardener'.
He comes from the nearby village Nyesal. The man is frail, dark, timid, but with a fierce tenacity to stick to his job.
The 'garden' is a stretch of lush lawn interspersed with unkempt growth of unexciting shrubs and plants, yet some, going by their patterns of foliage, were planted by someone with a keen interest in horticulture. They bear a marked look of plants once loved and cared for. They are not so popular now, not with Selvaraj at least. But they seem hardy. They thrive in spite of negligence.
Selvaraj has his way of doing things. I am not plant- lover, but I know a thing or two about pruning and stuff. Selvaraj does things in ways which do not follow any settled approach to gardening. He has a pair of secateurs which he uses for everything from pruning to nail clipping. When the blade gets brittle, he rubs it against a square log of wood with some sand. Those hedge clippers must be a decade old now!
Some years back he transferred a living tree to another location by uprooting it yet the tree has survived.
Besides that he does everything else like bring dynamised water for a neighbour of ours, pump in air in cycle tyre, build hedges and fences. He signs for the community garbage register, keeps lock and key safe and gets in trouble with a maid or two from time to time. One he winked at a widow. The widow, who apparently was starved for attention, made a row. Selvaraj said sorry to more folk than he needed to and the matter was solved. The maid was asked to leave.
Yesterday he smiled at me. I said hello and smiled back. Beaming all over he told me in typical village wise manner that the female guinea pig Mir has as pet would breed in a day or two. I am confused, because when I bought the pair I made sure that both were males so as to avoid proliferation of the furry rodent. That one of them is a she beats me, and that she is going to have babies adds to my tension. But Selvaraj broke this news as though he was announcing the birth of his own grandchild. I marked that.
There he is right now, just outside my window, under that 'surrender of falsehood' tree. I think that we have a bond. As to what it exactly is I do not know, but it is a human bond. It is "of Human Bondage".
