There is a garden called Mayfair Garden, which I can call it my favorite. It is at a walking distance from my home and I can recollect spending many a energetic mornings and calm evenings here, sunny mornings, and mornings that are drenched with raindrops, with a little bit of sun, shining through them. I have a very distinct memory of walking in the dark of an evening, with the chilly winter wind blowing in my face. But I also cherish the solitude and relaxation that this garden gives me. It is a precious thing for me and soothes me when I need it the most.
I am a lover of nature and natural things and this garden is no exception. I have visited this garden enough to notice the trimmings and cuttings that took place. A change in the greenery is evident to me when I pass through the different sections in this garden.
But there is a very different reason why I love this garden. I can almost exaggerate and claim that this garden has got a personality of its own!! Call it the landscaping or the design of this garden, or its layout and construction... whatever it is, but I love this type of a contrasting environs that it lends itself to this garden.
For you see, the jogging trail in this garden winds its way among the landscaped lawns and trees in a serpentine path. It enters two distinct zones of this garden, one is an open zone, and the other is a shadowy zone. That this change in zones is evident to someone who visits the garden every day.
Let me be more precise about this, as this is the one thing that is so very amazing about this garden. When you are jogging or taking a leisurely walk in this garden, you will feel the presence of two distinct areas of this garden.
Once you go past the narrow gates, you come into an open zone. This is the zone, where, in most mornings, you will pass by joggers on their morning walk. You suddenly become alert that you are not alone, and this is the thing that will spur you to join in the others. You walk past the gazebo and some moments later, you come across the separate section in this garden that has an air of privacy about it. You will find people exercising or chatting about in the benches in this section.
This is also the section where people come to just sit by themselves and have a chat with others on their phones. You will always hear a male or female voice chattering or talking aloud in this section. This is also the section where people who are serious about their fitness can be seen exercising or doing their pranayams.
You go past this section and then enter the darker zone, where you feel a subtle change in environs. The sunlight disappears a little, and more of the darkness creeps in. If you are a lover of all things natural, and love wildlife, then this is the very section that I will suggest you pay attention to.
You will hear crickets chirping away furiously in a tree, or a loose branch of a tree brush you on your walks. This is also a section where there are some benches for seating. There is a jogging path that connects the main one from this point. You can ignore this one and continue on the main track.
This is the section that I call the 'shadowy zone'. You feel isolated from the world here and if you love this solitude, you will love this zone. The lights of the garden also are not that powerful here. They have little power to overcome the darkness in this zone.
This is also the zone where children come to play in the swings. Evenings is the time when their joyful voices ring throughout the garden.
The creatures that I come across
A mention of this garden is incomplete without mentioning about the various creatures that I come across in my walks. I have very clear memory of squirrels frantically crossing my path and scampering on a tree. And their loud calls are in fact, so loud, that they ring above all the other sounds of the garden. This squirrels seem to be running their whole lives, as if in terror of cats and crows. There is not even a single moment when I have seen them relaxed. Their hurry, only seems obvious, once you know they live in the same environment as the cats and crows, or the kite, who hovers in the air waiting to strike at them.
Then there are the birds up on the trees. Of these the most common are the mynas and bulbuls. The parakeets are also up there, perched delicately on overhead cables and wires and on trees. They are also among the noisiest of birds that I know of. The call of the bulbul is a soft and sweet one, and you an hear it if you are in earshot range. Then there are the most common birds that everyone knows of - the crows and the pigeons. The cawing of the crows makes up much of the sounds of this garden, and mingled with the shrieks of the squirrels and the parakeet, transforms into an avian orchestra. At times, I have seen the Black Kite swoop down and pick a small branch in its beak.
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