India's traditional art and entertainment forms are amongst the most evolved and sophisticated of such systems. Carnatic music, classical dances like Bharathanatyam, Kuchipudi etc, theatre and drama forms including Harikatha and folk arts are amongst the traditional and ancient art and entertainment forms today. Indian films which today have their own idioms are patterned after the traditional arts in their formative years during 1930's and 40's. Carnatic music and bharathanatyam reigned supreme in Tamil films during this period. Indian cinema especially Hindi and Tamil cinema have grown to be one of the largest film industries in the world, perhaps next only to Hollywood.

Befriending plants and trees may seem quite strange. But unlike human beings, they always remain committed, self-less, generous and repay in plenty what you have given to them. Naturally plants are endowed with some special characteristics. They are never artificial but always remain natural according to the seasonal variations.

In summer they shed their leaves and manage to live only with their skeleton. When season changes to spring or autumn, they have new lease of life, their skeletons are clothed with beautiful green leaves. Then they begin their life cycle in right earnest; they breathe; they too prepare their own food in a special process known as photosynthesis; they reproduce by having flowers which turn into fruits.

I too have a few plant friends at my garden. They were small plants a few years ago. Now all of them have grown up into trees. Since I have played a significant role in rearing them up, I can even proudly say that I am their guardian and caretaker. I have a coconut tree, some papaya trees, two jack fruit trees, a lime tree, a guava tree and a suppotta tree etc in my garden. Since I have a number of fruit trees in my garden, it has virtually become a mini orchard.

Surrounding my house, these trees always create a very cool atmosphere during summer providing us with gentle breeze. In the rainy season we feel too cold to live at our home.

I still vividly remember. Several years ago, I got this coconut sapling from a nursery and got it planted at my garden. What I have been doing all these years to her is that I have been just watering her; sometimes cut off her aged leaves and trimmed her; applied some salt and medicines to help her to recover from the onslaughts of some strange insects. Now she is alright. For the past few years, she has been yielding coconuts to me regularly. Apart from serving us delicious and nutritious coconut water frequently, coconut forms the part and parcel of our dishes that we have in our dining table.

About nine years ago, I brought these jack fruit saplings very safely from Trichy and planted them in my garden, ignoring the advice of my neighbors that one should not have jack fruit trees in a garden. But they have a few peculiar characteristics. They never spread sidewards and have grown only upwards; now they stand tall and I can look at them by only bending myself backwards. For the past few years, the jack fruit trees are yielding fruits in plenty to the envy of my neighbors. Now they say that these jack fruits are so delicious.

Here is my guava tree. For the past few weeks she has been actively yielding guava fruits in their shining yellow color. But she is too generous and has a number of friends other than me;I think I am a little bit possessive and look at her friends with envy; a number of squirrels and parrots are her close friends. While I approach her only during the day time, her friends stay with her night and day. It seems that she revels in their company too. She also shares her fruits with her friends. I even tried to admonish her saying that her friends would be with her only for a few days until she was yielding fruits. Then, they would go away. But, she simply smiled at me. Every morning, by 0700, I go nearby her. By that time she would have thrown some ripe fruits on the floor. I simply collect them and sometimes pluck some of them from the guava tree when they are yellow in color and large in size. The plucking of guava fruits from the tree stretching myself forward or backwards is a very good exercise for me.

I can only marvel at the ease with which my papaya plants have grown into trees so quickly and bear fruits in no time. I should be thankful to my mother who had brought a couple of papaya fruits from her sisters home a year ago. When the papaya seeds were thrown into my garden, within a few months, these papaya trees have grown in all their grandeur and yielding yellowish fruits. Now I have a couple of trees. Two of them are male papaya trees and they will have only beautiful lengthy flowers. I also have a couple of female papaya trees, yielding a plenty of papaya fruits. Ever since, these papaya trees began to yield fruits, my wife began preparing a number of dishes using papaya as a vegetable and then as a fruit. I owe my clear vision to these papaya fruits and I have no any problem like constipation etc. My daughter quite often uses papaya fruits for her facial. When summer comes, we have papaya juice frequently. Then what else you want from these papaya trees! They are our family friends

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