A neighbour asked what I was growing. Then another. Now it's the easiest conversation I have all week.

I'm not naturally the person who strikes up conversations in the lift or lingers at the building gate. I say hello, I get where I'm going, that's usually the extent of it. So I didn't see this coming — that the em-Li sitting by my kitchen window would end up being the reason I know more of my neighbours than I did a year ago.

It started small. Someone from the floor above spotted it through the door one evening and asked, half-curious, half-making conversation, what I was growing. I told her — basil, that week — and she mentioned she'd been meaning to try growing something herself but always killed everything. We talked for longer than either of us probably expected to, standing in the doorway, about nothing more complicated than leaves and light.

Then it happened again. Someone else, a different herb, the same kind of question. I started noticing it wasn't really about the plant. It was that growing something gives people an easy way in — a low-stakes, specific thing to ask about that isn't "how are you," which nobody really answers honestly anyway. "What's that you're growing" has an actual answer, and somehow that turns into an actual conversation.

I've swapped tips with someone I'd never spoken to before. I've been asked for a few sprigs of mint by a neighbour who ran out mid-recipe. None of this was something I set out to build. It just happened because there was something worth asking about, sitting in plain view.

I still wouldn't call myself the friendliest person in my building. But I've had more real conversations near this thing than near anything else in my apartment. Turns out talking to strangers about basil isn't so hard, once basil gives you a reason to.

- Suma, a startup founder