Flash Post 264!

Button, while driving down Chowringhee Road to see my old lady in white who is in a nursing home after having suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke about a couple of weeks back, I noticed how beautifully each plant, lining the central traffic divider, had been trimmed so they all were of a particular height. They had obviously had their leaves snipped by the gardener who looks after the maintenance of greenery in that area. He had obviously done a great job because each and every plant looked green, healthy, neat and well cared for.

There is a word that describes this process to stop trees and plants from growing big.

Are you talking about bonsai?

Yes. Bonsai it is.

Well, bonsai is an art where the roots, branches and leaves of trees as big and the peepul and mango and plants like the tomato, lemon and citrus fruit like the orange are regularly trimmed to thwart them from growing to their actual sizes! I have seen tiny mangoes, oranges and tomatoes growing on bonsai trees and plants.

But isn’t that very cruel?

It is but lots of people practice it in the pursuit of art!

Hmm.

Do you know that in Japan women are made to wear wooden shoes called clogs when they are young? The Japanese feel that the smaller the feet the more beautiful a Japanese woman is!

That’s so cruel.

I know how painful it is to wear a tight pair of shoes! And here you have women whose feet are stuffed into wooden shoes to stop them from growing!

That’s the height of cruelty. Do dwarfs fall in this category?

No, Button. Dwarfs are humans who don’t grow to their size owing to a pathological condition. Their limbs are not trimmed to stop them from growing!