The air in our apartment was still, when we walked in after our month long trip to India. The luggage was dropped on the floor, the footwear was discarded in neat bachelor stacks, and I walked up to the window to pull apart the white curtains. There on the narrow window sill, a mostly leafless basil plant still held on to life in the dying sun of the evening.
I was quite surprised it had survived over four weeks. No one had been watering it during that time, and yet it had weathered the dry spell. I was sure that with a little care, it would spring back into as much of of bloom as you can expect of a small herb growing in a small pot, indoors in a desert.
Thinking back, I realised that we had done some things to prepare the basil plant for our long absence, and we had cared for it quite well even before the trip was imminent, all of which are sure to have contributed to this survival story.
