IN a small house, opposite Sunday Bazar in Islamabad, lives a man who loves thorns.
The man, Aslam Jadun, is a lover of plants. He has untold hundreds of them. But, what is special about his plants is that all of them have thorns of unseen shape, length, cruelty, magnificence, elegance and grandeur. Some of these plants have as many as 17000 thorns in them. Ouch! His house is covered with them. In fact, his is the house that is known as the Podoon wala ghar in his neighbourhood. Pots, probably in their hundreds, dot Aslam’s house, right from the gate, all the up to his terrace. There isn’t a room in the whole house that doesn’t have a thorny side to the whole ambience.
During my visit to this amazing place, Aslam took me through a guided tour of his place. He talked of his passion, his love for these plants that he can’t probably live without. I inquired about his passion for these plants.
“Personally, I like them and love them like an Urdu poet’s mehbooba , but you know that biting and stinging is the nature of the scorpion and snake. Likewise, my plants won’t spare me if I am careless or if they are angry with me for not attending them properly or giving them the attention which they think they deserve”.
But Aslam is not alone in this passion of his. His son and daughter-in-law are at hand to photograph the beauty of these thorny plants. And at times, these pictures have to be taken in the middle of the night
“Some flowers bloom only for one day, so we are alert to catch their beauty. Some flowers bloom during in the middle of the night and die before sunrise. Some remain blooming for one day while others for a week or ten days. But normally those are the flowers that are very small and perched in between the thorns who protect them eagerly.
“One has to tend to these plants throughout the year just for a flower, the flower that unfolds its beauty for a day and then departs. Some flowers have fragrance while others not. Fragrant flowers survive for a day or two.”
But in order to observe their beauty, Aslam has to look after them in great detail.
“My plants don’t bite me. When I touch them or look after them, their thorns do not hurt me. Perhaps I have developed a sense to avoid their sting. Secondly, just to water them, particularly in summer, it takes me nearly an hour to water the plants only on the roof. Naturally, someone is left out and I hear somebody calling me ‘I am thirsty, please give me water too’, and when I go in the direction of the coming voice, I find one pot that has been left out. Some times I hear a voice saying, ‘Help me I am in trouble’. I just go near the plant that has developed some trouble, which is being pestered with some bacteria or disease. I attend him like a doctor, I operate upon it. I use insecticide, I change its pot or soil. Sometimes I even uproot it, wash its roots, place it in the sun for many days to make it free from pests and spray insecticide on the roots, then replant it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
“Again, when I feel that a plant is being troubled by heat of sun, by rain, by cold wave. Then I try to shift it to a safe and comfortable place.”
Aslam’s passion for the plants has inspired the rest of his family to get involved as well. Sons, daughters-in-law and even his grandchildren, all have grown a liking for the little thorny things.
“My wife, is great lover of flowers and plants. The evergreen and flowering plants are of her choice.”
However, none can match the passion that Aslam harbours for these stinging beauties. “It’s a job. I am a retired person and have time at my disposal to look after them, to collect them, to tend to them.”
Aslam’s ailing health — he is a heart patient — too has failed to keep him away from them. “I usually have chest pains, like angina, but so much is the love for these thorny plants that even during the pain I take the risk of going up stairs to have a look at them and give instructions to my son what to do with a particular plant.
“When a plant dies, I am very grieved, I sit by its side and virtually weep over the departed soul. I am depressed whole day long. I bury it with my own hands.”
Well then how about hiring a gardener?
“I have one who works part-time.But the cacti are very delicate plants and to look after them one must have special knowledge of them. If fortunately, I do find a knowledgeable gardener, I will not be able to afford him. You know that these plants are not native. These have been imported from abroad some have adapted the soil and the climate, while others have not.
“Watering them, feeding them, having special soil for them, to acclimatize them, requires knowledge, a lot of labour and expertise. Of course some plants have adapted to the local weather, can bear our hot and cold weather, rain and drought of not watering for many days. At the same time, I have a plant whose roots have been kept in water for over a year and it remained alive. But then, there are others who cannot bear the minutest of extra water. Expose them to the rainy season and they rot.”
Aslam’s precious beauties cost from a few hundred to a few thousand. But this is the way the former Station Director, Radio Pakistan, Islamabad likes it. So much so, that his family members often remark, “Your Cacti pots are like the proverbial camel. Someday they will be in and we will be out.”
IN a small house, opposite Sunday Bazar in Islamabad, lives a man who loves thorns.
