Pieces of the Puzzle

'I volunteered for some greening initiatives in my office. Please go easy on the praises this time, while my halo goes for servicing. So while we were in the conference room, throwing in some dull ideas on how to celebrate Earth Day, I spotted it. There was a money-plant (people here call it ivy) sitting high on one of the closets totally neglected. In other words, it was dying a painful and lonely death. Completely withered, but showing some vital green signs of life. What a fighter, I thought. Must have been un-watered for months, from the time we had our office reconfiguration. While the meeting was still in progress, I animatedly staged the whole affair and ran off with the plant to the kitchen to revive it. The only thing missing from this scene was a stretcher and mourning plant-relatives. I hope I sufficiently managed to make my green-team greener with envy and guilt by proving to be the one who can stand up for the cause. Well, I did hear a slamming of the conference door. Uh! Such dramatic people!

'In the kitchen, I laid the plant near the kitchen sink, removed all the dried up leaves and twigs, cleaned up the pot and watered it. The soil was still hard, so I got a plastic fork from the cabinet and started jabbing through the dirt to loosen it a bit. If that plant could talk, it would have heaved a sigh of relief and said- Alpha, you have a big nose!

'A colleague walks in. Seeing me poised with a fork and potted plant on top of the kitchen counter, he goes, 'Even for a vegetarian, I think THAT is extreme lunch!'