The sacred non-events of an ordinary life

 The spring was at its peak when I got these five saplings of different colored petunias. These are delicate flowers, vibrant but soft and vulnerable. They make the most of the spring here, spread big lollops of un-fragmented love, and fill many a gloomy yard, balcony and little garden with hopes and smiles.

The woman at the nursery won’t give false hopes. ‘They will flower for one month at the most,’ she said. ‘And sometimes for a few months,’ she added after some reflection. She is proven right. They are still there, not at their smiley best though. We have to understand. They cannot smile at their best in all this heat. They are under the merciless bombardment of sunrays till noon. They almost melt under the impact of the fiery sunrays and droop down like wax, the petals almost ready to turn fluid and go running as a colorful stream. But when the wall shadow comes over to give shade and a sip of life, they slowly come out of their fluidy slumber, regain life and smile through the pining evening and thirsty nights.

There is hot sighing loo whirling around with a statutory, dry, ill-humored brusqueness. It sucks moisture from everything around. These are summer flowers, long doing their duty since their prime during the short-lived spring. Septuagenarian flowers full of wisdom and deep meaning of life in their petalous eyes. They are faded, beaten, stunted and shrunk with age; old soldiers with their sagging, drooping bodies but with wisdom in their frail bones. And to me they are flamboyantly heroic. They seem proud to have long beaten their stipulated time. It’s a big assurance to have them just in front of my verandah, welcoming like a dot of fresh spring; spreading their smiles around holy tulsi mata they look like an offering to the holy plant. They complete the stage of my faith at dusk when I light a little sesame oil lamp under the tulsi.

The resident gecko that stays in the flowery world creeps out and waits patiently for some crazy parvana, the fabled moth, to come near his beloved shama, the flame. Then it sticks out its tongue and licks the lore of infatuated love.

Well, these are the sacred non-events of my ordinary life. They enable me to vaguely surmise the eternity’s magnitude. Have flowers in your life for they will make you genuinely, perennially prosperous. In a stiflingly smart world, ever trying to reach materialism’s apex, forever fanning a chaos around, buzzing and howling with excitement, the flowers stand as little symbols of pause, tiny smiling commas pointing to love, beauty and truth.