A few soft petals of a rose, tucked away tenderly between the pages of Ma’s diary fell on my lap.The petals had faded with time and when I tried to pick them up ,they crumbled into tiny bits, scattering all over my lap. As I picked up each bit of the tiny dried petal, my mind slowly travelled back into my favorite childhood place, my Ma’s terrace garden. Gently caressing the pages of the diary I tried touching Ma’s unspoken words locked in those pages; without reading a single word I sensed her hidden emotions. But today’s story is about those beautiful flowers that bloomed years ago in my Ma’ s garden and about those evergreen memories that got entwined in my mind forever. Colours and smell stangely grow more profound in memory, a place untouched by times harsh hands.

My Ma kept the most beautiful terrace garden and I was her busiest honey-bee assistant as a child. Running errands for her, digging up mud, plucking yellow leaves, watering plants with a pipe, getting thorn in my fingers, through all these chores Ma was introducing me to my plant friends for life.

Our garden would come alive every summer evening with friends and family getting together under those clear star lit open skies of a rural town in Bihar. Between adda, music, recitation and food, something magical would happen like an interlude. A cool summer breeze would blow and carry with it the scent of freshly bloomed Beli, Jnui, and Rajonigandha ; So strong were the essence that conversations would stop mid sentence, albeit for a few moments. It felt to me as though those dainty flowers knew how to  draw all the attention to themselves. Little plates filled with Beli and Jnui placed all over the the house filled each room with a dream like fragrance. In my young mind this scent smelled like love and it has been so since then.

I grew up recognizing flowers by their names in Bangla, like a ‘mishti daak naam’. Summer evenings were also the time when we would wait for the cactus to bloom, almost like an annual event. As soon as the tender buds showed up between the thorns of the cactus plant our count down would start. We simply called it the “Cactus phul”, no fancy names. We would sit on the terrace till late hours in the night seeing the flower bloom, ever so slowly and elegantly, one petal at a time ; like a princess gently unfolding each pleat of her exquisite white gown. So much beauty but for one night, but in some sense time doesn’t matter, all I remember now was the effort of that flower to bloom one petal at a time like an enchantress amongst the thorns.

Not as exquisite, but one of my favorite was a humble Aparajita climber which climbed besides the big Mehendi plant. I loved the name of this flower, Aparajita, meaning ‘the one who cannot be defeated.’ An Indigo blue small flower, the Aparajita, it filled up one brick wall with its many blooms, coloring the wall blue. Ball lily was another flower which would amaze me to no end, tiny florets all bunched up and bloomed together like a ball on fire. A beautiful and rare ball of flower.

Then there was Shiuli or Shefali ( latter my Ma’s name ) , the small flowers of October, announcing the arrival of Durga pujo in our minds even before the Kash phool swayed in mirth. Shefali cannot be plucked from the tree, one has to patiently wait for the trees benevolence. In the early morning hours a bed of Shefali flowers carpeted the ground ,every day, without fail. Joyfully I would shake the branches for more flowers to shower upon my little head. To sit on the floor and pick each flower by hand and see the jhuri ( wicker basket ) getting filled up with orange stemmed soft white petals was like collecting the grace the tree had shed. Shiuli / Shefali stems left a faint orange glow between my thumb and index finger. That faint orange stain has seeped into my skin and heart forever.

Roses or golap were my Ma’s favourite flowers.  She would bend hours over each plant tending to them. They bloomed in so many colours. The bright red rose envied the joyful sun kissed yellow and the warm orange rose hushed as the soft pink rose blushed spreading its beauty all over the garden. The Golaps in our garden bloomed like the flowers seen in flower shows. Each flower like a piece of paradise, blessing our humble home. I wonder today, which one flower amongst those plenty, had my Ma chosen to keep it in her diary, was it a testimony of love, or simply a few petals forgotten. It was perhaps for me, her busy honey- bee to find them one day and go down memory lane.

I bring back my story from paradise to the commonality of mundane. The every day common flower in our garden was the ordinary Joba ( hibiscus) , they bloomed mostly in red colour. Joba was used in our house for puja, an offering to the Gods. Seeing these flowers regularly spread in our altar , had somehow diminished the mystery or beauty of this flower in my mind. But a song which Ma used to hum as she spread these flowers, one at a time, in front of her Gods, still remains etched in my heart …”O mor ma er pa- er joba hoye oth na phute mon”…( Shyama Sangeet ). In loose translation it would mean….”my heart,  bloom at my mother’s feet as the humble Joba”. There are no flowers in my garden now, but like the humble Joba I pray that the garden within my heart always blooms with the bliss of Almighty.