talent-kerala.net

Hypothecated to Nature – this curious acknowledgement is displayed in the garden of Dr.Balakrishnan Nair at  'Thapasya' in Perunna near Changanassery, Kottayam.  A small garden, containing many varieties of plants, made with labour of love by the doctor who makes use of all kinds of waste materials to enhance the appearance of it.

A retired professor of Homeopathy from Homoeo Medical College, Kuruchi, Kottayam, he had gathered many of the plants during study tours and specimen collection trips with his students.

The house being adjacent to the road has its advantages or disadvantages as one would see it.  One implication is that from the lorries parked outside drivers and cleaners throw used liquor and cola bottles into the doctor’s compound.  The doctor takes them as godsend and employs them aesthetically in his garden.  The liquor bottles, together with damaged porcelain cups end up as boundary for the garden.  The cola bottles are cut and made into pots for planting cacti and other plants.

Different types of palms, dracaena, rare black anthurium, money plants, some medicinal plants etc interspersed with sculptures add variety to the doctor’s love.  At times other than when patients come to meet him, he is in the garden, tending the plants with as much care as he would a patient.

Even the parasite plants growing on the mango tree are not plucked and removed but are pruned and kept attractive.  When ivy was allowed to spread on a broken asbestos sheet, it produced the appearance of a sculpture.  Now even the board advertising ‘fancy plants for sale’ has been covered by this persistent grower. 

Any one can come into the garden.  The gardener-doctor, who has hypothecated the fruit of his labour to ‘Nature’, does not hesitate to pass on the plants.

Bottles and cups forming a boundary in the garden

Courtesy: Hema Gopan, Karshakashree, April 2005

Contributed by: Administrator 

"Light gains make heavy purses."