Community & Gardening
Every summer, my dad’s garden is lush with herbs and vegetables: vine ripened red tomatoes, voluptuous purple eggplants, long hairy okras, black and green chili, fragrant cilantro, tall, elegant chives, lal shag (red spinach), mustard greens, green and purple shim (flat beans), refreshing cucumbers, string beans, snap peas, lau (gourd), and, my least favorite, bitter gourd. He grows all of this in abundant quantities, usually starting with cilantro, mustard greens, chives, and lal shag, all of which grow well in the cool spring days of Michigan. Midsummer, there are so many tomatoes and eggplants that he usually ends up giving some away (though, this summer, I’ve promised to make and freeze pasta sauce). And the chili and shim: there’s always enough to freeze and last through the winter. Even as the plants flower now, there are three large bags of frozen chili stored away from last summer.
Abba’s bagan
What’s most wonderful about this garden, this rich, abundant source of homegrown, pesticide-free herbs and vegetables, is that it’s confined within the 19 by 9 feet plot in our backyard. And like my father, almost every other Bengali family in this (and most likely other) city has one exactly like it. A garden that isn’t limited in variety merely for spatial reason: if the gardener can dream it, it can be actualized.
For me, these gardens are nostalgic, reminiscent of the lush, verdant land of our homeland, where hardly anything can be kept neatly pruned (and I doubt anyone’s ever tried). Plants and trees defy all odds and grow anywhere and everywhere they can: within the crevices of high rises, up and down the steepest of hills in all sorts of unimaginable angles. I like to imagine that as Bangladeshis, we all miss that sight and try to recreate it.
Practically, though, these gardens serve as a way to build community. Even before spring arrives, the garden is a topic of conversation in every household. When spring finally arrives and gardening is underway, there’s a discussion of how seedlings are doing. When a surprise frost kills someone’s plants, another family is ready to rescue them from a summer without green chili or shim with extras they’ve kept indoors for just such an emergency. When summer arrives and friends visit each other, they take a requisite look at the garden, admiring the plants, trading secrets. When someone with a little more space than us grows a native plant (like nali shag, greens that are slippery, slimy, and oh-so-delicious when cooked), they don’t hesitate to send over a bowl.
The fruits of these tiny gardens are occasionally used to barter, too. Most memorably, it was a large basket of carrots, white radishes, watermelons, and tomatoes that I received for tutoring a friend’s daughter for the summer. I couldn’t have imagined something better.
When I think of home, when I think of visiting my dad, this 19x9 feet plot is what I think of. It’s what makes me smile. It’s what reminds me of my homeland. It’s what makes me love the deshi community. And that’s no small reward.