When I was little , we went home every year in the summer holidays to Madras as it was known then, and lived in my maternal grandfather's house. Holidays at his home meant immersing ourselves in the patterns of grandparental lives. Thatha had retired and Paati was done with raising four living daughters and two sons , and now kept house amicably, cooking us all manner of delicious food, regaling us with stories, and an occasional game of chess.
A variety of chores was distributed amongst the younger grandchildren. Paati's daughters , the two or three who came to live with her in the summertime , assisted her in the processes of cutting, chopping and grinding for elaborate daily meals, to feed around nine grandchildren and seven adults, three times a day. I accompanied my grandfather on his early morning round of flower collection. When the chandini growing at the front of the house had not flowered,, there would be no flowers for the day's elaborate pooja. Then grandfather and I would set off, very early in the morning, to pluck flowers from the neighbouring stock, the overhanging closed umbrella shaped hibiscus or the kachnar, occasionally even the yellow arali, and bring them back in a lovely cane container, that held arrows at some point in its evolution before it became a receptacle for fresh flowers. Sometimes, albeit infrequently, we brought home from the vilva tree, three leaves banded together, that grandfather declared were sacred and special to Shiva, the forester, who was accepting of dried leaf offerings. We plucked flowers from the houses of neighbors from whom grandfather had taken prior permission: These neighbors were friends he had made over many years. Perhaps they were happy that flowers from their front yard were being offered to the gods, and our flower picking adventures remained amicable. The betel leaves, also offered to the gods were bought in the evening from a small flower shop nearby.
By the time I grew up, a young lad on a cycle dropped off a bundle of red rose petals along with a fresh set of betel leaves every evening. Grandma stored these away since they were consumed only after they were offered to the gods.
Decades later, after I had filled my home with ornamental plants and succulents, and then expanded the green cover to the front of the house, I rescued two hibiscus bushes , one from a construction site where an old house was being torn down and the other from a friend who was giving away surplus plants. The only ground left for the hibiscus shrubs was behind my home, in the service lane which received abundant sunlight. Divesting them of their pots, I planted the small shrubs to flank both sides of the back door. A bougainvillea at the head of the lane provided a pink and green canopy and a thick curtain and the hibiscus are now ten feet tall. Although I sighted buds, I rarely ever saw the flowers.
All this changed during the days of lockdown because preparing for lectures and cooking urgent meals in coordination with a different life outside the house; was now replaced with pottering around the house in the early morning to new rhythms that demanded being rooted to the house I noticed from an upper floor, numerous women who never introduced themselves, routinely gathering flowers every morning. The hibiscus is a prayer worthy flower, everywhere in India, flamboyant and noticeable, so my plants was routinely stripped of their flowers on a first-comer basis.
On one rare occasion, I stepped out into the service lane and saw both bushes in flower, and captured this magical moment on camera. Manju who has resumed helping me with housework in the mornings has now declared war on the foragers of flowers. In an earlier time, Manju used to live and work on her ancestral farm in Pashchim Banga. When she comes in to work, she brings in all the flowers that she can see. Of late there is an efflorescence of hibiscus inside my home. I do not have the courage to challenge assumptions that involve an omnipresent God who cannot view flowers in the bush, or to rebut the argument that flowers in bloom cannot bring joy to passersby while retaining their own leafy addresses. For now, Manju has taken this matter out of my hands, with her morning collection.
