Last July I went home to Lahore. I arrived with cuttings of my own: a monstera and a tradescantia, both wrapped in damp tissue and cling film. They are now thriving on a rooftop in Pakistan. I came back with snake plant leaf pieces, cut and callused, tucked in a bag. I did not realise at the time that I was running a small exchange programme.
There is a road in Lahore called Mughalpura Road that becomes Workshop Road. Plant shops line one side of it. Further along sit the old Mughalpura Railway Workshops, built by the British in the 1900s. They used to overhaul locomotives and build wagons. Most of that work has moved elsewhere now. The wagon-building yard is abandoned. The rest still runs. I went with my dad. We stopped at a stall and I started picking. Snake plant, aloe vera, tulsi, jasmine, a lemon tree with a separate cutting and a handful of seeds, chillies. Eight plants in total. Ten pots, all terracotta.
My dad did the talking. The shop owner named a price. He countered with a lower one. The owner said the line every shop owner says: “I’ll be here, trust me about the quality.” Dad held. The price came down.
We rented a rickshaw, fully loaded, plants and pots and bags of soil pressed in. The driver did not blink. We unloaded everything in front of the family house.
The next day everyone was out. I had picked the rooftop because the sun up there was better than the half-darkness of the ground floor. Three storeys to climb, with terracotta pots at four or five kilos each. It was around 37 degrees. London heat somehow still feels hotter to me. That night I slept with just a fan. My family and sister slept in the AC room.
I did about ten trips up and down. Pot, soil, plant, pot, soil, plant. Each time I came down the stairs my t-shirt was darker and heavier than what I had started with.
I could have asked for help. I could also have paid for help. My cousins, both of whom have lived in London, told me later I could have paid someone off the street to carry it all up. My mum said the same thing. In Pakistan, hiring is common. In London, we never hire anyone. I think it’s the mentality of the place you are. It influences you a bit.
I don’t feel comfortable with the hiring. I know “alone is faster” is not always a good instinct, and I’m trying to let people help me, in life and at work. But paying a stranger to carry pots up stairs I could carry myself sits differently. So I carried them.
When I stepped out for some air, an old man on a bike rode past, long beard, possibly an imam. He got off at the end of the road, turned, looked at me, looked away, then looked back again in shock. I was in shorts, a t-shirt, and a cross-body bag. My cousins wore jeans and t-shirts. My mum and dad wore shalwar kameez. The shorts, probably. I laughed it off. It was funny.
By the end of the carry I was soaked and the rooftop was a garden.
The rooftop itself is big. It gets dusty no matter how often you wash it. During the day you can see eagles overhead, grey-necked crows, and pigeon cages on the neighbours’ rooftops. At night there are more stars than London ever gives you. The sad part is there are no trees for kilometres.
Later that week we drove out to Dolmen Mall, the biggest mall in Pakistan. The drive goes through the rural belt, farms and small factories and the railway workshops again, and then suddenly you are in a different country. No one in the car said anything about the change, the way no one comments on the weather where they live. I watched. Wide roads, glass buildings, big touchscreen maps every few metres, AC pumped hard enough to feel on your skin. The mall itself felt like Westfield White City. The women in the family went shopping. I ended up babysitting the younger cousins. We ate McDonald’s. The mall could have been anywhere with money in it.
I had a small return parcel ready: snake plant leaf pieces, cut and callused, tucked in a bag.
In London they sat in water for two months. One piece grew a small root. The others did nothing. I planted the survivor in soil. It is on a shelf in Barking now, by the window.
The monstera and the tradescantia in Pakistan started faster, by all reports.
Two cuttings went out, one piece came home. The rooftop is fuller than the shelf. For now.
