The divinity of the kumquat trees, sunflowers engaged in perpetual prayers to the sun, the strategic service of the roses - for two weeks as the plants' caretaker, I was a busy bee observing and imbibing
Until last year, I had never tasted kumquat. I'd heard the name and had a sense of the fruit's appearance being bonsai-like, akin to Mandarin oranges.
Last October, my father-in-law placed a bowl of the glowing-orange, oblong fruit on the kitchen table. He was keen for me to taste them. They were from our terrace garden. I took a saucer from the cupboard and a knife and began to peel an inch-long kumquat, finally arriving at the flesh. I placed it on my tongue and was assaulted by its tartness. My father-in-law looked on. At some point, he came towards me, and he put the fruit directly into my mouth; in the same way that my father often does, either with fruit, or with something delicious that he has made himself, in which he takes pride, like guava cheese or dodol.
He fed it to me, unpeeled, placing the whole of it on my tongue, encouraging me to bite into it. I did.
It was astonishing how much my experience of the same fruit was altered simply by the nature of how it was eaten. I hadn't at all conceived of how much sweetness was concentrated within the thin peel, how it mingled with the tartness within, as if one was encountering a melody composed of both treble and bass notes. It really was a revelation.
For the first two weeks of August, while my in-laws were away, I was asked to care for our terrace garden as well as plants within the vineyard behind our house. The owner of the winery enjoys bee-keeping, and many elements of the show garden are designed around their nurture, especially the various lavender bays. While I originally assumed the roses at the front of each row of vine were also meant to supply nectar, I learned recently they serve a more strategic function. If any of these rose plants get infected by a fungus, it means you have a week before the parasite affects the vines. The rose plants are indicators, and the person to whom their care has been assigned must be vigilant while watering.
During my in-law's absence, I began to cherish this duty. I'd go either early morning or around 7 pm. It was the most mundane and yet the most exciting part of my day. I was witnessing the gradual growth and decay of living beings. I encountered the sunflowers as creatures always immersed in prayer, as if perpetually appealing for forgiveness from the sun, their giant cores poised towards the ground, as if bowed; their aura always populated by bumblebees, like the rows of lavender.
Unlike most blossoms that inundate a tree, gradually transforming first to bud, then fruit, the kumquat embodies a kind of material continuity. Pic/Rosalyn D’mello
At some point within those 14 days, the three kumquat trees in front of the office had begun to flower. It felt mystical. Unlike most blossoms that inundate a tree, gradually transforming first to bud, then fruit, the kumquat embodied a kind of material continuity. On each of the plants were not just blossoms but also ripe sunset orange oblong fruit as well as littler green buds in an intermediate phase between being and becoming. Approaching the tree felt like encountering a moment of divinity, like bearing witness of the kumquat's experience of its consciousness. As if I was encroaching upon its moment of continuing rapture.
The unexpected effusiveness of the fragrance it was secreting, with notes that lay in the interstices between jasmine, raat rani, and honeysuckle, made it seem like a cosmic event that was validated by the bees. The kumquat was embodying eternity within this irrepressible moment, manifesting outwardly its conception of its past, present, and future, within a simultaneous instant, its now-ness.
It was the living embodiment of the central premise of Clarice Lispector's Agua Viva. "I was born. Pause. Marvellous scandal: I am born." Immediately after these lines appear, she writes, "My eyes are shut. I am pure consciousness. They already cut the umbilical cord: I am unattached in the universe. I don't think but feel the it. With my eyes I blindly seek the breast: I want thick milk. No one taught me to want. But I already want. I'm lying with my eyes open looking at the ceiling. Inside is the darkness. An I that pulses already forms. There are sunflowers. There is tall wheat. I is."
On Sunday, when India commemorated yet another year of independence from colonialism, in Südtirol, women were walking to church with bouquets of herbs, a centuries-old ritual on the feast celebrating the assumption of Christ's mother, Mary, into heaven. It is alleged that her tomb was found empty, instead of her remains were flowers and herbs. I watched the women bring these beautifully bound bunches, most from their own gardens, to be blessed. I've been thinking a lot about what it means to live closer to metaphors. I aspire to self-delight more often, like the kumquat tree.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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