The Art of Composting
Composting is a deeply satisfying and rewarding pursuit. It is a lot like motherhood. In some ways, more reliable. There, you start with a little blob of human being and end up with a large blob of human being. Sometimes, the large blob is a satisfying product. Here, you start with vegetable and fruit scraps and end up with rich dark compost to feed to your plants. Always guaranteed to succeed. Like motherhood, what no one tells you about is the couple of smelliest, yuckiest steps in between. These are the high secrets of the Sisterhoods of Pregnancy and Composting.
In high summer in Mumbai, with the humidity hovering around 80% and temperatures in the high 30s (that’s celsius, in case you’re wondering why I’m complaining), it takes a nose of cast iron and a stomach of steel to open the buckets full of the pickled waste and transfer it to baskets layered with coco peat to dry out.
It’s a rich smell. Rich and ripe and permeating every pore of your skin. It makes your eyes water and your nose tingle. The house smells. Everything you eat tastes of that awful smell. Even the birds stay away from the balcony the day the buckets are opened. The family flees in all directions, leaving me in charge. Who am I kidding? They are the rats to my sinking ship. Every time I do this, my respect for civic garbage collectors goes up many times. Also, I’m not crazy about the gone green newbies who leave this part to their hapless household help and then post pictures on social media, holding a handful of clean, sweet smelling compost. Yes, you know who you are. Get out there and get your hands in the pickle. Post a picture of that.
I can’t decide which is worse. Transferring the stuff one gloved handful at a time or tipping the bucket over in one go. It’s the band-aid ripping dilemma, magnified a thousand times over. The only way to get it done is to…well…get it done. The very first time I opened a bucket to harvest the pickle, I used a face mask liberally doused with my strongest perfume and sturdy gardening gloves and I still thought I would throw up my breakfast. Miss Dior is forever tainted with the memory of nausea to me. It was an evil smelling, yucky mix such as nightmares would be made of, if I dreamt in 4D. Many deep breaths and curses later, I completed the job. It has gotten easier with time. The deep breathing was definitely not the way to go. Shallow breaths and a mind firmly fixed on other fragrances are far better strategies.
Composting on my balcony is an intermittent job. The monsoon rains come sweeping in off the Arabian Sea, and there is a constant threat of the compost getting wet and ‘spoiling’. Yes, there is irony in that statement. After all, you start with vegetal matter left to essentially spoil. Then you help break it down by adding composting powder and keep it dry. The ready compost then gets added to the soil where it gets wet all over again. Nature works in strange ways indeed.
This has been a year of give and take, win and lose. It took away people I loved. It gave me strength and dignity and self respect. I lost my self confidence and the ego took a huge beating. I won back some peace of mind by cutting out negative thoughts and toxic people from my life. Through all that, my garden kept me sane. And if my plants love the compost, there’s no question of going back to dumping my kitchen waste in the trash. Composting may be a smelly, not always pleasant experience but the reaping has been worth the sowing. My plants are happy. Ergo, I’m happy. That’s a rare win win situation.