Suburban ramblings

Alright.  I am going to write this essay with no particular end in view, so please bear with me as I pen my thoughts in the order they manifest.  I apologize in advance for meandering all over the place!

I grew up an urban animal.  As such, a landscape scantily spotted with trees amid a concrete jungle was my visus cotidie growing up.  Pavana, on the other hand, was raised in a quiet village in a home in the middle of a farm.  Therefore, sparsely populated hillsides with dense vegetation and a personal backyard garden was normalis situ for her.  Currently though, we lead a suburban life in a small city that is figuratively a stone's throw from both a major metropolitan and the countryside of little villages.

Over the past few years, we have had many a conversation regarding our notions of life in each of these settings.  These notions, I have found from these conversations, are influenced heavily by one's upbringing.  I have also sensed discernible skepticism about any setting different from that of one's own upbringing.  And these notions are the same as the ones commonly held by most urban, rural, and suburban dwellers at large.  For instance, urban dwellers tend to equate their urbannness to urbanity and maintain a bogus high-handedness when interacting with rural dwellers (evidenced by the negative connotations of words like देहाती, गावठी, etc.).  Rural dwellers on the other hand have a supercilious attitude regarding their immunity to diseases because they live "rough and tough" lives.  And suburban dwellers like us defend their hauteur using the popular perception of the "American dream" that suburban life has been oft apotheosized as.

असो...

My mother, having lived in a major city throughout her life, often talks about her dream of moving from the city to a quiet village into a home in the middle of a farm where she can grow her own vegetables.  I do hope that we can make that happen for her some day.  Meanwhile, Pavana has tried to realize her own dream of nurturing a veggie patch in our yard; and she has done quite well in the last three years.  Mind you, this is no mean feat, given that we have only 7-8 months of snow-uncovered ground.  This year has particularly been fruitful (or veggieful), as we have my in-laws staying with us.  Their agricultural acuity and hard-work has manifested in an abundant harvest of a variety of tomatoes, beans, snap peas, sorekkayi, acorn squash, bell peppers, chili peppers, and even potatoes!  We have also had various greens like saambrani, methi, some lettuce varieties, gongura, harive soppu, basale soppu, onion, garlic, drumstick, curry leaf, and mint.  While I confess that I have not participated in the gardening at all (other than helping my father-in-law put up a portion of the deer fence that one time), the pleasure of using all of these fresh ingredients in cooking and then tasting them has been almost transcendental.  My daughter, for one, loves the daily drill wearing her muddy flip-flops and going into the veggie patch to fill her little basket with tomatoes and beans!