Myth of a F –Lo’v’er

Among the few people who refused to find me an infuriating being was the gardener / communist worker I met during my annual visits to roots. He was brown all over except the grey streaks that stuck faithfully to his shrinkable scalp. I watched him pluck the noon coconuts that defied a communist refrain of 'no' wealth amassing. 

One such afternoon I follow him knowing fully well he noticed my presence. He turns around once to warn me, “Your family will not approve of your wandering or talking to me”

I shrug the warning away, my curiosity in the mystical surrounding more intense than man made barriers.

 He walks into a cosy enclave of low hanging boughs,  with stray flowers springing up the red tinged soil and turns around to tell me, “ Sarpa Ka:vu”.

I look at him and gasp unbelievingly, “The abode of snakes?”

“Hmm… yes. Do you like snakes? He asks finding me a good listener at last.

“I  don’t hate them” he smiles at my evasive reply.

“ My wife died of  a snake bite” he says intertwining his grime filled fingers like coupling snakes.

I startle at the way he speaks of sadness with such finality, “ why do you come here then?”

He smiles, “She is living here still”

I look around, I try to imagine what a snake like wife might look like.

 He watches me brush my hands across the white flower and close my eyes in its fragrance; and smiles at the choice I make of it over the hanging tulips.

“Nishagandhi” he pronounces the identity of the object of my curiosity. He continues, “When it blooms, she will visit me”

“when will it bloom” my curiosity hangs on every syllable.

“Once, just once a year, for a few hours, at midnight. Tonight. But you will be sleeping”

I feel my heart beat at the anticipation of watching something rare, “I want to watch it bloom, meet her too”, my reply surprises him just as much his expression does me.

A midnight chime, unfortunately I fail to escape paternal eyes that catch my attempt at slipping away.

I lie beside an apathy ridden cousin trying to tell her, “ She would have come, Nishagandhi would have bloomed”

Next morning, I see the flower all wound up like the coiled grief of a man.

He ignores me like a man would someone who knows his grief, while I swing my little legs sitting on  a cut, old wooden log.

Years later, I ask dad of the beauty of “Nishagandhi”.

“The fragrance, yes” , his eyes misty with some memory it evokes, “ The beauty is more in the will of  a flower that blooms its best with a lifespan of just a few hours. A metaphor for human life.”

I imbibe the meaning he intends, the smiles, the hidden messages, we miss just when they are to be caught in a fleeting moment in life, the myth.