During the lockdowns in 2020, I grew tomatoes and chillies on the balcony of my flat in Bangalore. I'm a software tester, and I was working from home and going slightly crazy, so I needed a project.
My balcony is tiny, about the size of a single bed, and it gets strong sun in the afternoons. My neighbour Lakshmi aunty, who's a keen gardener, gave me some seeds and a couple of old plastic pots, and I ordered a bag of compost. I planted the seeds in small trays first and kept them on the windowsill, and I remember checking them every morning before I even made coffee. When the seedlings were a few centimetres tall, I moved them into bigger pots. Looking after them was harder than I thought. I had to water them every evening, sometimes twice in the hottest weeks, and tie the tomato plants to sticks so they didn't fall over. At one point small insects attacked the leaves, and Lakshmi aunty showed me how to spray them with water mixed with a bit of neem oil.
Growing them gave me a surprising amount of satisfaction. During a period when everything felt uncertain, it was calming to have something that grew steadily and needed me every day. When I picked my first ripe tomato, I was ridiculously proud, and I made my mother taste it on a video call. It also gave me a new respect for farmers. If I struggled so much with six pots, I can't imagine managing whole fields. I still grow chillies now, although the tomatoes have been less successful since.