Friday, March 14, 2008

Plant Pilferers Anonymous

The stake-out, the plan, the final act of pinching…that’s what makes us tick

Ever stole a plant or a cutting? No? Is it because you’re one of those scrupulous types or is it just because you haven’t had the opportunity?

The amateur gardening world is divided into two – people who pinch plants and people who walk the straight and narrow. There’s nothing much to say about the latter – they’re law abiding, they plan their gardens and go to nurseries, they never impulse shop for plants, they pay for their plants, friends gift them plants. If they like something, they’ll politely ask for a cutting. In short, they have a well-developed sense of what is theirs and what is someone else’s. They live good, but sorry-to-say, unexciting lives. Yawn.

Now take the former group of gardeners. The plant-pinchers. We have a poorly-developed sense of boundaries. We do accept that God made plants. But that’s about it. The rest is a free-for-all. When we see a plant that we don’t have in our garden, the farthest thing from our minds is to go look for it in a nursery. What a tame-lame option! A heist is so much more fun.

Our modus operandi is varied and imaginative, depending on circumstances, nature of the plant that has to be nicked, level of security present at the site, and other such considerations.

If it is a bushy, abundant plant that we’ve seen on our morning walk, hanging temptingly over an unsuspecting stranger’s garden, going in and asking for a cutting is our last option. No fun. We prefer to simply snap off a couple of stems, and continue our walk. Sometimes we stake out a joint. Go up and down for several mornings figuring what we like and plotting the best way to get our hands on it. After all, we have our dignity too, and we don’t like being shouted at by chowkidars or surprised by some baying Alsatian that takes its job too seriously.

Some plants do not yield to the quick snapping action, and an embarrassing situation could ensue. There you are, with a stringy resilient stem that refuses to come away from the mother plant, but is damaged by your attempt to take it home. We hate that. It’s awful to damage something in this wanton way, where it’s no use to the original owner and to us either, and harms the plant too. You see, there’s honour among thieves too. So for such plants, the forward-planners amongst us carry along a little cutter. Snipp…one clean cut, and nobody’s hurt.

Once a cutting’s in our hands, we’re in a hurry to get home and lovingly plant it somewhere. We usually already have a spot in mind – a blank spot in our collection, which seems to be waiting for just that particular specimen. Some wise old member of our ilk has also made things easier for us by setting down an important learning: ‘Certain plants thrive better if you steal them’. And this group of certain plants is fast expanding to include new varieties every year.

The uncrowned queens of plant pilferers are perhaps a pair of sisters who operated in Delhi in the eighties. One of their sons, then 11, was witness to his mother and aunt’s most audacious heist. It was the night before Gorbachev was to visit India. The entire walkway running up to India Gate was lined with a profusion of potted plants. The two ladies had seen them on the way back from work. They had also seen the huge and visible security presence. But they simply had to have one of those potted palms, perhaps a dahlia and maybe a young bougainvillea. There were hundreds of them, well-tended samples from the gardens of the Government of India. Taking them would be like taking from your Mai-Baap – not even stealing, they told themselves.

In a well-orchestrated plan, that night the sisters told their respective husbands that they were off for an ice-cream with the kid. Once the ice-cream was in the kid’s hands, they drove back home, but with a quick stopover near India Gate. In front of the boy’s amazed eyes, the two women got out of the car, quickly stowed away three plants in the boot, and simply drove off. This was in pre-bomb scare and suicide bomber days, so the security was obviously taking a well-earned nap, the night before the Russian arrived.

The boy kind of guessed that the ice-cream he was eating at that moment was hush-money. So he kept his mouth shut when they reached home. He went on to, of course, become a blackmailer when he grew up. And an avid gardener too.

All we can say in our defence, we plant-lifters, is that we’re a generous lot. We are happy to give away plants, make you cuttings, and urge plants on even strangers. And if you nick something from our garden, our dog will look the other way and our chowkidar will offer you a plastic bag for you to take your loot home.

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