A quiet Sunday afternoon was when I visited the
Randolph Street Gardens. It was eerily quiet, the gardens looked quiet and
deserted from afar. As I entered the gardens it didn’t feel eerie anymore, the
freshness of the air, the smell of fresh mint had taken me over. This was the
first time I was working in a garden, that too it was a big one. The stories we
had heard from Mother Dawn had left us in awe. Let me tell you the actual site
was much more breath-taking!
I took a look and tried to
decipher the to-do list, with a little bit of pondering and help from google I was
able to pick one. Mulching the area near the garden beds it was! Let me tell you,
I had never heard the word mulch before this, anything related to gardening was
not even close to the hustling bustling city life which I had for the last 19
years. As I started to work, everything started feeling right, although my
first time I felt I belonged here, I felt empowered.
Unluckily for me I was the only
one present at the gardens. Well, this made it impossible for me to interact
with people and get to know them but it allowed me to feel a different kind of
serenity which wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I had the power of
imagination. I imagined myself a part of something I never had been a part of.
To my surprise I was a perfect fit. I took from this garden that everyone was a
perfect fit here. This was the charm of such a community garden, only had e
heard from mother dawn how this garden bought people together, now I felt the
same.
My aim was to take from this trip
a lesson to help me in my research of power dynamic in a society. Lack of other
people hindered me from that. But what I took from this trip was ineffable. I
took away the understanding that communities have their own charm, they are a
place where people belong and one cannot just see them as a cluster of people
and study them, to understand them you have to be a part you have to be one
among them.
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