The Mango Plant.

Mango plants are extremely slow growing ones. I planted a mango seed when I was in kindergarten. It was nice. I did it with my mother in our garden, and it was an important moment in my life. Somehow, that mongo plant, the concept of it, always seemed to represent my life. It made me the teensiest bit more self aware, and I have been extremely thankful for it’s existence, especially recently.

The plant thrived, just as I did, in my childhood. It grew and grew, but one day, in grade 4 or 5, it died in the house renovations. I became sad, I probably threw a tantrum, but then I planted a new one. I couldn’t let the concept of ‘my’ mango tree die out, you know? I never realised it before, but as my mango plant reincarnated, I did too. I changed, subtly and slowly, but I changed, a lot. It was a tough time then. Di had left for med school and that was a huge shift in reality for me. I stopped growing for a while, as my plant died, but after a few months, I started growing again, just as my new plant grew it’s first leaves.

I grew and grew and my mango plant grew with me, until one day, some birds made a nest on one of its branches. It was the sweetest little thing. They gave tiny brown eggs in it and I remember how I went to my garden and looked at the eggs every single day for a whole week, but then one day, the nest was empty. There were no birds there. Only eggshells. The eggs had hatched and the birds, they had flown away, but somehow it felt like they took the life of the plant away with them? The plant stopped growing. It didn’t die, no. It just didn’t change. The half dead leaves didn’t fall off and no new leaves sprouted. I waited. I waited for the plant to start growing again but it didn’t. And somehow, for a reason yet to be availed to me, I stopped growing too. This was grade 9. I didn’t grow much in the first half of 2016. It was a slump for me and the plant. Then I decided that I had to do something. I had to be me. I had to be… there. So, I forced myself out of it. And it worked. It worked amazingly. I went from eh to great. I was super active in life. I had my life in my hands, and I felt like I was on top. I was the king of my world. I grew immensely for 7 months. I became confident about my personality for the first time in forever, you know? But my plant still didn’t grow.

Towards the end of my boom, I told my mother that I wanted to move the plant to our frontyard-which had much better sunlight for growth-and plant it on the ground, without any pot to restrain the growth of its roots, so that it could grow into a healthy, strong tree. Two weeks passed, then a month, but my plant still didn’t grow. This time, it had started dying. I had started seeing signs but I fell face first. After all, it’s true what they say, the faster they climb, the harder they fall. Something happened which was supposed to hurt me a little, but it broke me. I was tapped with a nail, but instead of getting dented, I shattered into a thousand sharp shards of glass. I was too weak and naive. I was too attatched to my fairytale life and life did me a favour by making me realise that.

I was too broken to make sense of myself. I was.. too broken to be fixed, I thought. It was a ruthless time for me and somehow, for each day of that painful time, my mango plant lost a leaf to the unforgiving earth too, just like me. By the end of it all, my plant and I, we looked quite similar. We looked broken, dead even. And so my plant was representing my state again. Maybe it didn’t grow when I did as a warning to me. Maybe it was telling me to slow down, but I didn’t listen. So there we were, both of us, quite miserable. And it, quite dead.

I tried to plant another mango seed after some time. It didn’t grow. Not even a little. All of this, everything, it saddened me, and it has been, for the past 4 months. I have been miserable but I have been developing my thoughts so that today, I can write this. I have realised that I wasn’t ready to be reincarnated right then. I hadn’t really learnt anything from that experience then, I was still hurting. Maybe that’s why my seed didn’t grow this time. Maybe it wasn’t time yet, but I feel like when I plant another mango tree next summer, it will thrive again, because today, I feel like I’ve left all the bad things and I’m ready for a new beginning. When I plant my mango seed in 2018, it will grow, and it will grow stronger. 2017 was a good year for me. It taught me things, it gave me important lessons, but most importantly, it broke me so that I could be fixed again, so that I could become more beautiful. Here’s to a wonderful new year.