A simple, little world of marigolds

 

My marigolds put up a brave face against harsh January to keep the banner of life and hope flying through their smiles. Now the beginning of February has better prospects for more smiles. They aren’t showy and fragrant like fresh jasmine or magically alluring like dew-laden rose, but still they have enough in them to bring some traces of halcyon days among this gloomy winter. With their virtues and valor, they lit up the corner in my garden with their subdued smiles. An almost sunless January couldn’t subdue their smiles. It’s a world where we have decimated smiles in the wilderness across the planet. Our civilizational pursuit of El-Dorado has seen us fluently frittering away the pulsating aesthetics that mother nature had decorated along our path.

A few flowers remain, that too in the little gardens of almost obsolete people who still love flowers, who still somehow try to hold onto the majestic sinews of mother nature. Somehow wading through the broiling, intriguing corridors laid across the monochromatic hues of the modern landscape, they carry a fistful of earth and a flower smiling on that. Their rarity means they have become a treasure in their own ways.

My neighbors peep over the walls pretty greedily. This little clump of yellow, maroon and orange marigolds is drawing them like nectar-hungry drones. Any day I prefer my marigolds for the honeybees only. It’s soul-pacifying sight to see the bees gathered over the table of frilled petals for a sumptuous sociality in lazy, hazy afternoons. The flowers open their hearts to the guests with an unerringly courteous smile. A month away from the spring, it seems like a thin ration line for the honeybees. But the human bumblebees want the nectar of God’s blessings by offering flowers at the feet of idols in the temple. It’s symbolic ritual by the way. I thing the Gods will be happier if you offer them your love and smiles and leave these few remaining flowers for the starved honeybees. Sadly, we have taken our materialistic pursuits to the extent that we won’t leave any corner for them at our house.

There seems to be an impulsive scheming going around. The consumer culture is galloping by leaps and bounds with intriguing ingenuity and flawed imagination. The consumer culture is compelling, thrilling and free-flowing in its hypnotizing sway over our senses. The Godly courts are under heavy bombardment of demands by the citizens. We are always seeking more of the consumer items that would give us an edge over our neighbors. And flowers come to our mind when we set out to appease the Gods to turn the tables in our favor.

Well, my simple request to people is please forget about flowers on the altar if you don’t have a place in your balcony, garden or whatever space available that can have a flowery smile. My little bed of marigolds is rapidly vanishing under the reaping tool of faith. I feel sad for the bees. Isn’t it better to have lively flowers at homes—that makes them temples in themselves—instead of dead flowers at altars?