The De'pot'ted - by Inesha Gupta

The Quarantine, in the ripe months of spring, resembling the true shade of the weather, proved to be an ideal time to blossom my skills and branch out. I embraced this time and made up my mind to thoroughly utilise it by replanting my pots to who’d endured the wrath of the winter months. I sprinkled a few seeds of methi, into my hopeful pots, repeatedly jabbing the soil with my poor compass, with the motive of “airing” it. Some minor mishaps followed, but eventually my pots seemed to have returned to their original state, barring the tiny saplings growing inside of them.

The following month, I made it a routine to water them every day, hover around them, desperately hoping they’d shoot up with a blink of my eye. By May, they were almost at the stage of bragging, where I could canter around the house, asking everyone to pay a visit to the tiny flowers which had sprouted. It was a pleasing sight.

Around this time, an Eagle, sharing the same sentiments as me had flown in and proceeded to set up a nest on the Bael tree, opposite to my house, disrupting the solace the tiny mynahs had found in its shaded branches. The mynahs, now seeking an alternate shelter, began to prowl around my street, eyeing every A.c duct they saw with an imminent desire and letting out guttural cries of approval every once in a while.

Being picky clients without a fine real estate agent they took their own sweet time to zero down on one spot, a process I’d never anticipated would jeopardise the safety of the budding friendship between my methi saplings. But the morning of 4th May dawned to be an unpleasant one, where on visiting my pots, I was greeted with the sight of spilt mud and twisted methi buds covering my balcony floor. And the 'innocent' brown criminal responsible for this heinous act sat on top of it, clutching a bundle of twigs, eyeing me with curiosity. Furious at the birds, I had just begun to tell the birds that those were my pots when an Eagle swooped down and grabbed a fallen twig which lay right in front of me.

This resulted in me hastily making peace with the bird, scrambling to get inside(the eagle had attacked a neighbour the day before) and slamming shut the door behind me. I’d descended into chaos and returned back in one piece.

These happenings, though resulted in the demise of my plants, made me realise the sheer amount of species whose lives are intertwined with mine, our every move impacting the other’s actions. Every creature inhabiting the Earth, leading its only life, changing someone else’s.