No Poinsettia this christmas

I had just finished re-doing my drawing room in rust, brown and red the colours. Not overtly so; just a tinge here and another there. And with the cream walls, they gave the room a warm rosy hue in the cold Delhi winters. I needed just one more thing – those bright red plants in the black pots dotting the various nurseries all over Gurgaon. I told A and he surprisingly didn’t come up with his usual “Another plant? Not again?” (the painful memories of hauling the heavy pots during our last shift still fresh in his mind, not to mention his muscles).

Yesterday we had gone out for lunch and he obligingly stopped at a very busy intersection so that I could go and check out the nursery alongside. 150/ said the mali. For a small potted plant? How about if I take a very tiny one? No? What about one without a pot? No?

I must have looked rather crestfallen, so A said we could try the other nurseries. “You shouldn’t have gone in your Parisian best. The mali hiked up the price”. My Parisian best happened to be a smart orangish jacket, common enough in Paris, but tres chic here, or atleast with the malis or so A thought.

On our way back, we stopped at a place where there were three large nurseries side by side a riot of colours with the winter blossoms. Poinsettia? (ah…so that’s what it is called). 125/- said the first one, the second one didn’t have any – all sold out and the third and the last one said 90/-. Earlier I would have paid up without much thought, but ever since I went to the Government Nursery (yes that is what it is called) at Nizamuddin, I realized by how much I was being ripped off. There I had bought 5 plants for 80/- only. So, wiser, but infinitely sadder, and minus poinsettia, I walked back to the car.

Ignorance would be so blissful, wouldn’t it?