Madhuri shares her experience of the enchanting world of flowers and fragrances, highlighting the intertwining of memories with their vibrant colours and scents, exclusively for Different Truths.
Alone in the company of Jasmines, Chamelis and seasonal fragrances, it seems like people are kept waiting in a room beside you but do not know you, preserved in silence, which their individuality as living things makes even more impressive.
Rains — and the first Crepe hibiscus hesitantly puts out a crinkled plume. Jasmine, Kundo, Mallika, Magnolias, and Lilies take the cue and burst out in chorus, a rain song. Hibiscus of all heights, whether dwarves or giants over ten feet, each one splashes out. Big blotches of candy floss pink, clouds of lilac, streaks of smoky purple, crisp cutouts of white linen and the sure stop sign of red. The rest is a wardrobe of green.
I see in these blossoms the faces of Bapi, Ma, Thama and Bhai and let my thoughts ride on the back of morning…
I see in these blossoms the faces of Bapi, Ma, Thama and Bhai and let my thoughts ride on the back of morning, touched with the fragrance of Mogra and Madhukamini. And everything else is forgotten. It gives a smell of childhood that I still hold dear, a fragrant memory, a place fixed in time and concept in a cocoon that nothing can break. My childhood terrace was lined with these blooms and birdsongs, the jasmine garlands I made for grandma’s morning pujo, my father watering the plants so tenderly and my bhai held captive with a book or held by Ma for a bath. All is gone.
Night descends in purple, pink, and sometimes violet light. I’m not sure if this is reality or something my brain has decided for me.
The other day, I was going past a pukur in Durgapur, the small pond surrounded by a grove of trees at the edge of the ashram. After two consecutive dry monsoons, there is little water in the pond but that hasn’t stopped the lotuses from filling almost every inch. Twilight is descending fast. I see that in the purple light the burgeoning mass of lotus leaves, scrunched and bunched and unruly, appear blue. Blue? Yes, a distinct ultramarine, and the lotuses a deep pink, deeper than they will ever be in plain sunlight. Here and there, I can see the sky caught in bits of water, the pink sky, and some bits of the trees overhead. Perhaps the rain will come this year, and the pond will fill again and the leaves, blue at sunset, will rejoice.
I find it hard to play favourites in flowers.
I find it hard to play favourites in flowers. I saw tulips for the first time while at Bagdogra. I fell in love with their colours, bell-like shape, and the superabundance of shades. When I think about it, the fragile perfection of Plumeria, the leonine magnificence of Magnolia, the majestic promise of the white Lily in the bud, and the gamine grace of the jasmine, places in my life have often taken the memory of a particular flower.
Bengal will always in my mind be associated with the Rajanigandha (tuberose) – exotic, unbelievably heady, like the slow firing of all senses in the anvil of a dark night. One is simply thankful for not being an insect or the scent and the beauty and the night would be altogether too much, and I would just die martyred to it all. As it is, morning brings release to this prisoner — although I now await the sun to go down and this little bunch to do its magic outside my window.
Oleander (Kaner or Karabi) shrub is growing luxuriantly around us. The pink flowering Oleanders and the yellow ones are extensively grown as ornamental plants in landscapes, parks and along roadsides as they are drought tolerant. But wonder how they can thrive and not be consumed by the ordinary castles. Because despite many Ayurvedic properties, this incidentally is a very toxic plant – everything from bark to the seeds, the leaves and even the sap can be poisonous for small children and people suffering from certain medical conditions.
The toxicity of Oleander is so integral a part of the character of Oleander that it’s become part of legend. Folklore has it that the armies of both Alexander and Napoleon were at least partly decimated because of unwittingly consuming oleander.
But what a beautiful flower this is. So vivid and delicate-looking (though they aren’t fragile) that Van Gogh, calling them ‘joyous’ and life-affirming’, painted them too, while at Arles. There are also stories of Karabi sap poison in literature.
According to that three-year-old’s perception, this garden grew every imaginable shade of flower, clustered beside a narrow walk.
As a child, I was given weird perceptions of things. So, when I think of the first garden I can recall, it was the one that suddenly opened out behind a narrow door in our uthan (open courtyard). According to that three-year-old’s perception, this garden grew every imaginable shade of flower, clustered beside a narrow walk. What was astonishing is that this fairytale garden grew in a Calcutta house, just beyond our poky little uthan with the mossy walls. I’m willing to concede it was nowhere near the garden I remember it as, but to a three-year-old in a grimy city, it was a wondrous thing.
My next garden was in Gadepan. So big it had a kitchen garden, a lawn, and the bottom of the garden. We loved that garden. Winters we sat in the sunshine, waiting for the postman to deliver our report cards and wishing he would never come.
The first were Phloxes, Nasturtiums, Zinnias, and Dianthuses. I learnt each one’s name as I wrote them down on pieces of paper to be spiked through with a broomstick and stuck into the seedling beds. We learned to fashion paper cones to shelter the baby seedlings.
The rows of green peas in the kitchen garden in spring, the first tomatoes, baby potatoes, the first bhindis (okras). The swing from the mango tree. The plank bit into my legs as I sat and swung to and fro.
Summer came with its mangoes on the twin trees.
Summer came with its mangoes on the twin trees. Evenings on the lawn, dinner under the night sky. Humid evenings, the smell of watered earth. Keema curry and hot rotis and the beginnings of a soft breeze, bring the fragrance from the Malati-lata creeper weighing down the sloping red roof of our house. The bottlebrush trees, forming a giant X and their rain of branches with leaves like a waterfall almost down to the ground and the Vicks smell of the leaves.
The rain… I remember my first raindrops on Balsam flowers, the first caterpillars chomping away at the spider lily leaves. The red velvet bugs in rain-soaked grass. The Doel’s unforgettable song as the sky cleared briefly in the afternoon. And so, the flowers continue to weave their magic and scent and memories wind up their way to my heart.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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