I believe in magic.
Oswald, Shinchan and Doraemon were more than just cartoons, they were the real influencers of my childhood.
In 2008, my father was posted in Pandharkawda, a small village in Maharashtra. We lived in a beautiful house with a huge backyard. My parents encouraged us to plant seedlings and saplings in an effort to bring us closer to nature and have our very own little farm.
One day, after coming back early from school, I was watching the latest episode of Oswald’s “Tomato Garden”, where Oswald plants a tomato sapling and eagerly waits for the tomatoes to grow. By the next minute, I wanted one of my own. With my mother’s help, I planted a sapling and waited. Within few weeks, the sapling grew into a plant and soon, it started giving fruits. Eating tomatoes with sugar after school quickly became my favourite snack — until one day.
A troop of monkeys destroyed the backyard garden, and the tomato plants were gone. It was the first heartbreak of my life and I cried uncontrollably. That is when my mother went out and got a tomato from the backyard. She told me that monkeys left it because it was hidden underground. That calmed the seven-year-old down. I believed her, completely.
The tomato became a beacon of hope. I believed that even when everything is lost, there would be something that would remain — a hope, a silver lining, or according to my story, an unplucked, untouched tomato that would make everything better. For next 17 years of my life, I truly believed in it.
I told friends — to believe in magic because it exists,
to relatives and extended families — to believe in magic because it exists,
when I felt I was losing belief in myself, I told myself — to believe in magic because it exists
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Last year when I went back home for New Year’s Eve, I caught the “Tomato Garden” episode while surfing on YouTube. Rewatching the episode and riding on the Nostalgia train, I sat beside my mother retelling the tomato plant story from 2008. But as I spoke, something felt off to me. My mother was unusually quiet.
And then, it hit me.
There was no way the tomato survived underground while the plant was uprooted completely.
It was her.
She had taken the tomato from the kitchen, dusted it with soil and gave it to her crying seven-year-old.
So, there was absolutely no magic.
In that moment, 17 years of life I believed in felt like a lie. But then, I looked at my mother and I understood something.
There was no magic in the garden that day.
But I believe in magic because it exists.
Because I now know where it came from.
