Two nights of rain have given me respite from having to water the plants myself as well as cooling things off. The weather is perfect right now! Additionally, there is life in my pots, although perhaps not of the kind I was hoping for. The flower sprouts are coming up quite nicely, and I think I'll have to thin them soon. The big pots show no signs of squash, bitter melon, or cucumber as of yet, but there are a million other tiny plants that have sprouted in it. The seeds must have already been in the soil, or floated in from the sky. I'm too afraid to pull the little sprouts out though, just in case they are going to turn into my big plants.
Last night, sitting on the balcony in the rainstorm, I was surprised to see a truck drive down the street with huge white foggy clouds billowing behind it--a mosquito-spraying truck. I sat mesmerized watching the clouds billow inevitably onward, up to the first floor balcony where I sat. The white smog seemed to leap towards me, and even though I thought I should go inside I didn't move. So I may have breathed in a bunch of crazy chemicals last night, who knows. I know that they sprayed for mosquitos in Virginia my whole life growing up, and I haven't died yet, so hopefully it's not so bad. I'm worried about that stuff getting on my veggies though.
Now a word about the mali. I feel like an account of gardening in Pakistan wouldn't be complete without understanding the cultural norms and practices related to gardening. Typically in South Asia gardening is the purview of members of an occupational caste called "mali," which means gardener; I'm not sure exactly how those caste boundaries are drawn here in Pakistan. It's not a prestigious occupation; here is an ad offering work for a mali in Dubai. The monthly salary listed is 700 dirhams, which works out to a little less than $200 per month.
Depending on how the caste thing actually works in contemporary Pakistan (and I don't want to overgeneralize here because it also seems that mali can be just a generic term for gardener) it could be interesting to study the transplantation of caste-based occupations outside of South Asia. But that's someone else's dissertation. Here's a colonial-era depiction of the mali of Baptist missionary William Carey:
Last night, sitting on the balcony in the rainstorm, I was surprised to see a truck drive down the street with huge white foggy clouds billowing behind it--a mosquito-spraying truck. I sat mesmerized watching the clouds billow inevitably onward, up to the first floor balcony where I sat. The white smog seemed to leap towards me, and even though I thought I should go inside I didn't move. So I may have breathed in a bunch of crazy chemicals last night, who knows. I know that they sprayed for mosquitos in Virginia my whole life growing up, and I haven't died yet, so hopefully it's not so bad. I'm worried about that stuff getting on my veggies though.
Now a word about the mali. I feel like an account of gardening in Pakistan wouldn't be complete without understanding the cultural norms and practices related to gardening. Typically in South Asia gardening is the purview of members of an occupational caste called "mali," which means gardener; I'm not sure exactly how those caste boundaries are drawn here in Pakistan. It's not a prestigious occupation; here is an ad offering work for a mali in Dubai. The monthly salary listed is 700 dirhams, which works out to a little less than $200 per month.
Depending on how the caste thing actually works in contemporary Pakistan (and I don't want to overgeneralize here because it also seems that mali can be just a generic term for gardener) it could be interesting to study the transplantation of caste-based occupations outside of South Asia. But that's someone else's dissertation. Here's a colonial-era depiction of the mali of Baptist missionary William Carey:
19th century Indologist and folklorist William Crooke (1896:453) offers these origin myths for the mali caste: "One story of the origin of the caste is that one day Parvati was plucking flowers in her garden when a thorn pierced her finger. She complained to Siva, who took a particle of sandalwood from his head, or by another account a drop of his perspiration, and on this Parvati wiped the blood from her wounded finger, and thus the first Mali was created." Another legend states that the mali caste is descended from "the garland-maker attached to the household of Raja Kans at Mathura. Krishna asked him one day for a garlad of flowers and he at once gave it. 'On being told to fasten it with a string, he, for want of any other, took of his Brahmanical cord and tied it; on which Krishna most ungenerously rebuked him for his simplicity in parting with it, and announced that in future he would be ranked among the Sudras.'"
I haven't yet met or spoken with the malis who work here at the guesthouse, but I plan to try next time they are around; it seems like they would know more about gardeners and gardening in contemporary Pakistan than Mr. Crooke.
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