We worship the neem tree on the first day of Chaitra, after Amavasya, when the moon is absent and darkness blankets every city in its comforting embrace. It is a time of honouring ancestors, performing rituals and connecting to our spiritual traditions. In West Bengal, where I am from, it is considered a manifestation of Goddess Durga, and the abode of Sitala, the protector against all sickness. For that reason, we eat its leaves, mixed with pepper and sugar, to ward off fever, and we burn the neem, to protect the living and the dead from evil spirits. In the same way, the tulsi is considered a manifestation of Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Krishna, and its presence is believed to increase purity and attract prosperity and protection.
Of course, these two are merely some of many, many medicinal plants my grandmother swears by, Ayurvedic remedies she believes are far better than the chemical, modernised medication that we seem to be so dependent on in strange, foreign Sydney. She tells me, “Muntu, you cannot speak Bangla anymore…how do I communicate with you when all you speak is English now?” She asks me what I have for dinner, and I say “pasta, maybe a chicken wrap”, and she gasps in shock, questioning my statement over and over again with the incredulity of a disappointed headmistress. I usually cough, afflicted with some form of flu as summer sleepily shifts to winter, and she asks me to rub turmeric on the sides of my nose and inhale the sharp, almost spicy scent of a few ground tulsi leaves. It is at this point I shake my head, and tell her I’ll be fine after taking some Panadol.
The call always ends in an awkward goodbye, me unsure what to say, and her hand up to her eyes, seemingly crying once more, unable to reach me across the millions of miles which have now been filled with chemical, modernised medication, fatty meats and the keening sound of construction and fluorescent traffic lights.
We never did have time for connecting with our natural traditions, for taking some time to go back to our roots in the simplest, most obvious ways possible. I didn’t realise how disconnected I was when I made fun of my grandmother for praying to a tulsi plant, telling her it was “just a plant, Amma”. I didn’t realise it when I felt repulsed at the sight of soil, appreciating tall concrete structures and the gleam of the glass windows on skyscrapers instead. I didn’t realise it when I looked out into the backyard and couldn’t remember the last time I had helped my dad water the plants, or had simply taken the time to sit outside and inhale the scent of the tulsi plant in my backyard, a forgotten ornament with meaning I couldn’t comprehend.
At some point, I stopped going outside unless I had to.
Strangely, the turning point wasn’t some deep, spiritual moment of reckoning, of inner reflection. It was me, sitting on a bed, crying so hard I couldn’t seem to breathe. Everything had built up. Exams. Expectations. Loneliness and dissatisfaction. I felt hollow. I felt like I was disappearing, fracturing in little bits and pieces.
My grandmother had come to stay with us that week. She didn’t say much, as usual. I didn’t notice her shadow at the door, watching quietly, like she always did, unable to reach me across this gaping chasm that she couldn’t fill with her sandalwood stained hands and her immeasurable knowledge of Ayurvedic herbs.
She did the only thing she could think of.
She handed me a glass of warm halud doodh(heated milk with turmeric) and rubbed the ointment made of tulsi leaves on the sides of my nose. She rubbed warm coconut oil into my scalp. She gently tugged me out of bed, half asleep, with puffy eyes, and opened the door to the backyard. We sat there in silence for a while, gazing at the stars, her fingers gently massaging my head, and my eyes fluttering shut.
For the first time that night, surrounded by the whispering leaves, surrounded by the flowers which I didn’t even know had grown, by the gentle wind and the fragrance of coconut oil, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I didn’t feel the need for heating or a fan, for a phone or an Ipad before bed(I’d been doom scrolling through Youtube every night in bed, unbeknownst to be my parents, unable to fall asleep without a device beside me), and I wasn’t restless or irritated, having terrifying dreams of a 75% on my Math Half-Yearlies. I simply closed my eyes, and dozed off.
That was the closest I’d felt to my grandmother in a long, long time. That was the closest I’d been to nature in an even longer time. I felt my body, I felt the warmth of the wind, and the silence punctuated by the chittering of some unknown creature.
And beneath it all, I felt the Earth. Not loud. Not poetic.
Just steady, real and alive.
Back in Kolkata, my Amma doesn’t debate whether “chai” is “flat white” or “halud” is “mustard”. She wraps leftovers in banana leaves, chews on neem twigs, filters water with cloth, and uses all the fruit peels that would normally land at the bottom of our bin in Sydney. Her world doesn’t produce waste, it doesn’t need to be “sustainable”- it carries memory, respect and acceptance of every object, honouring the environment and treating it with the same compassion she treats everyone else with. She is calm, she doesn’t lash out, she went through so much struggle, but still, is happier than I am.
My grandmother doesn’t have the strength to do much anymore. Her hands shake, and her strength deteriorates every passing day. She falls sick and takes more time to recover. With my friends’ grandparents passing away, every single day, I’m reminded that she might too. That at some point, my own parents might too.
She tells me stories. She tells me how her mother would make cow dung cakes to keep the house cool during summer. She tells me how she fed my father neem whenever he had a fever, unable to afford antibiotics and using only the knowledge her own parents had imparted to her. She tells me how everything we need is already here, and how we’ve just forgotten how to see and respect it. She does all of this lying in her bed, exhausted by the day, exhausted at the mere thought of getting up and walking around the house.
But the one thing she never stops doing is watering the tulsi plant, keeping it alive. She never misses a single day, almost doing it on autopilot. When I ask her if she’s scared, she simply smiles, bowing her head in supplication and softly whispering prayers to those sacred leaves.
Sometimes, I think about what I inherited. I feel shame for not knowing how to grow anything, for not knowing how to name the birds and to pray properly. I’m learning to grow basil, coriander and turmeric. I started listening to the way the rain drums on the roof, falling asleep to that sound. I listen to the whispers of Amma’s voice when she prays. I go out and water the tulsi plant every single day, and tell my parents what Amma told me in hushed, secretive laughter at night as she whispered sweet nothings and massaged my head with coconut oil. Even now, if I ask her to do it once more, or to make me halud doodh, she never hesitates, always ready to share a tidbit of knowledge with me, always ready to share another moment with me.
It’s such a little change, isn’t it? A little change that can lead to connection, to a newfound joy, to the creation of shared moments that allow us to connect with our culture, our heritages, and with the environment at the same time. A change that taught me to appreciate the beauty around me, to relearn little things that would’ve seemed insignificant in an urbanised, sanitised world.
My Amma never wrote essays about climate change. She didn’t have to. I sit here now, in the backyard, drawing inspiration from this world around me to tell her story. She lives with the Earth, not on top of it, and I think that’s the wisdom we have lost.
Perhaps, remembering the past will allow us to sustain a future. One we don’t need to invent, one we don’t need to construct.
The Earth still speaks to us. Sometimes, it replies to me in Bangla.
And I sit there, falling asleep as I listen.
Signing off…