Flowers
My village had a garden of flowers. Peculiar flowers would they be. They were flowers of every colour, flowers of every scent and flowers of every type. The names of Champa, Chameli, Rosie have circulated from our garden. By every mean they would be attractive enough to distract the eyes of passersby and I would be much possessive to them thinking that somehow they were for me. They would smile at me, laugh at me and gaze at me and I in all possible ways would give them proper response but I would neither touch nor ever pluck them for the fear of my father.
My father….. a dangerous father, a bullying father, father of fathers he would be. Acknowledged to new methods of threshing, a tyrant father he would be. He had two eyes ……one for me and another for the rest of the world. He would seem as if he had incarnated to foster and safeguard the flowers. Not alone I but even anybody else if ever dared a little would be a wanted subject of his rage. Such was my father. He would seem to be believing, “Flowers are not to be plucked, flowers are to be presented” but Bholu would say, “Flowers are ours. They are so beautiful only to please us. Nature has bloomed them for us. We have every right to touch them, to pluck them. They are to adorn our passion. Nobody can part us with them.”
This Bholu was the leader of our circle. For me he was more than a leader. A saviour I would think him against my father’s frequent denials. He would incite new hopes to my failures. Newly created hopes would fill new blood in my veins but I was a hanging pendulum between Bholu and my father.
After all, the flowers were my sacred aim, my heart danced with their charming name. No one was less beautiful, no one was more beautiful, they were all most beautiful. The whole village had the rarest glory with their scent and shining. New buds seemed no longer buds but very soon they would seem changing into flowers and mixing with the former blooming. Bholu would say, “ Flowers are ours. They are to be gained, not to be pained. To despise them is to pain them. Whoever despises them is a dead clod on this planet.” And I would be the true follower of his philosophy. If my father hadn’t been, I don’t know how many flowers I would have plucked per day.
My days would be the victims of the father’s stony heart but my nights would be blessed with the scenty flowers hoodwinking the all-alert father. So sweet dreams I would have incessantly for ten hours and then would wake up only by the father’s morning rebuke. At once a two folded loss I would feel… .one due to father’s presence and another due to flowers' absence.
What a lovely flowers they would be! All would call them by their fashion. My grandma would call them birds, my father would call babies and Bholu would call them hearts. For me they were everything. Full of pollen they would be but no beetle hovering over them could I bear. But princes from distant villages would often be invited by the elderly folk of my village to have a look of the flowers and they would depart with their satisfying faces. Very soon disguising as kings they would return with their dancing friends and take away their chosen flowers. My father would be the most pleasant witness of the flowers’ departure. I wondered why the whole village would sing even at its loss .
One by one the flowers would seem to me to be going away. At the yearly return of the festival of Holy I would count how many flowers had lost their twigs. Looking at those yearly returned flames I would reckon my loss with a weeping face. Just then I would find consoling Bholu standing by me. I would feel his right hand across my shoulders and listen to his consoling words, “ Flowers are ours. Our garden has much fertility to beget more flowers. Wretched are those who keep eye on the flowers of others.”
The spring of flowers was to me the autumn of sorrows. When this autumn began to rest on my innocent face, my father brought me one flower from some other garden. I felt its scent and shining and began to play with it. By and by I forgot the old flowers of our garden and my heart satisfied its full ambition with this new one. Now, after twenty years, I see there are no flowers in our garden. Even Bholu says, ”Flowers are not ours. Flowers have gone away. There are only buds never to change into flowers.” Of course there are only buds in our garden but my sixteen years old son says “ They are flowers” and just then with all of a sudden my dead father seems to be coming into me. I feel myself saying, “No, they are babies.” ……. This is the father tradition. This is the immortal tradition ….. Never to fade but to travel generation after generation. Let’s foster this father tradition.
