HORTUS CONCLUSUS

Alkapuri, the upmarket suburb, was fast changing into a jungle of newly erected high-rise apartment blocks, some separated by just a few meters and this is what made the 'walled garden' so special.  The space hadn't been sold to 'developers' - it's a wild place of palms and other trees and shrubs, all jumbled closely together and in the early morning, it becomes an enchanted space.  A green lung exuding oxygen.  Bird life seems concentrated within its borders, a chorus of bird song, a variety of sounds, as feathers are fluffed out in busy grooming.  Green parakeets swoop urgently from one tree to another and back again, with a flash of their emerald wings and even butterflies, quite close by, pale in the morning light, settle for a moment and then move on.   And just over the far wall, in the distance, through the dense foliage, to the street beyond, a woman in an orange sari, quietly bends....her left arm gracefully behind her back, as she sweeps up the fallen leaves with her charu.