It’s raining here in Kerala. Yesterday, as I was waiting outside my apartment building, I spotted a flower on the wet ground. It had fallen from the Chembaka tree that stands guard outside. On a whim I picked up the flower and felt the waxy petals, soft and curling around the edges. I realized that I hadn’t touched a flower in a very long time. The tiny screen of my phone offers a plethora of images of glossy exotic flowers when required, but the actual sensation of running my fingers over a flower had eluded me. The joy of inhaling the scent of summer afternoons and wet rainy days that flowers hold within them had been missing from my life.
I love plants and flowers. While my love-story with plants proceeds on a rocky path, my relationship with flowers has been more cordial. It might also be due to the memories associated with the fragrance of different flowers. As I caressed the petals of my fallen flower yesterday, I was overwhelmed by a mélange of precious memories which tumbled out and settled all around me. I gathered them up and shook them out at night while I curled up in bed with the soothing murmur of raindrops keeping me company.
There’s a wealth of possibility in a flower. It’s capable of arousing the most varied emotions in a person, just by being. Flowers transport me back to my mother’s puja room where the slightly floral scent of incense along with the dim glow of the oil lamp combined to give an otherworldly feeling. It was the place where my mother communed with Gods who had benevolent eyes and Mona Lisa smiles. No matter the turmoil in my mind, this memory centres me and gives me peace.
Jasmine flowers are largely associated with love and longing, but to me they are symbols of the simplicity of my childhood. We had a jasmine plant at home that was diligently nurtured by our household help, a wonderful lady with the greenest thumb I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, even though the plant grew lush and healthy, it did not yield many flowers. But every evening, she would collect a couple of those flowers, which made up for their sparse numbers with their intoxicating scent, place them in a small dish and keep it on our dining table. Nostalgic memories of a seemingly uncomplicated life.
A fallen flower can also take me to my college days when rainy afternoons and overcast skies brought with it a feeling of anticipation and romance. Gusts of wind carrying the fragrance of life and the freshness of rain would sweep flowers off their perches on trees, some to be trampled, others to be blown away and some special ones to be given to dear ones.
These and many more thoughts associated with flowers flit through my mind like a silent film visible only to me. As I lie in bed cozily wrapped in those warm memories I am lulled into sleep clutching the fallen chembaka flower in my hand.
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