Nitu and Chintu were going to Delhi with their parents for their summer holidays. Chintu was excited, he asked his friend Pandu to show him a map of Delhi. Nitu, however was not enthused. She was worried. She had something on her mind. She was thinking of the locked house when they were all in Delhi and her precious potted plants in the verandah. She knew that when they were away her plants would suffer. She had been looking after them with great joy making sure she watered them everyday.
Love and care
Whenever they flowered, she took a flower for her teacher or spoke about her plants at the “Show and tell” in class. And when someone appreciated her flowers or plants she would go home and tell her plants that. She had read somewhere that they needed love and care for they could hear and feel! So, with this forthcoming trip to Delhi she was worried that her plants would wither away and die without her love and care.
Chintu was always bubbling with new ideas. He decided to ask his cousin for a solution to this problem. His cousin recalled the science experiment done in school. They had learnt how water can travel through a thin piece of cloth from a highter level to a lower level. His teacher had kept one end of a piece of cloth in a beaker with water at a higher level. The other end of the cloth she placed in an empty beaker at a lower level. The class was surprised to see water seeping into the empty beaker.
But Nitu had a doubt. “How can all my potted plants get water?”
But Chintu had an answer for that. He asked Nitu to get several strips of thin cloth while he got a bucket of water. He placed a table at one end of the verandah and put the bucket on the table.
He arranged the pots around the table. He placed one end of the cloth in the bucket and the other end in the pot. After a time Nitu was happy to see that the soil in her pots was wet.
