|
We were walking across a garden when my daughter spotted a cluster of familiar
red flowers. She pulled me to one side and then, looking excitedly at me as
though she had a secret to share, she pulled me down to her height and whispered
in my ears. I shot up straight almost as soon as she had finished her
sentence. With my mouth ajar, I was about to tell her that it was probably not a
good idea to do so when I was transported to the time when I was
around her age.
It had been a rather long day from school and I was dead tired. Iwas walking
along the pathway that was lined with many ixora plants when my friend grabbed
me by the arm. Before I could do anything,
he gleefully plucked a single flower from the cluster and showed it to me.
Unimpressed, I was not about to be swayed by a puny flower and was about to
admonish him when he turned the flower upside down to show me a tiny, almost
invisible thread-like thing that protruded out from its stalk.
"Look!" he had said.
He pulled the faint yellowish 'thread' and right at the end of it, a tiny
drop of nectar appeared. At least, that was what I think it was, as it was
really quite sweet. That day, we raided the ixora plants. We really had a lot of
fun. I could still taste the sweetness till today.
My daughter's urgent tug brought me back to reality. I turned to my daughter
and decided that she too needed to know the joy of tasting sweet nectar from
beautiful blooms.
For the next five minutes, I let her show me what my friend had taught me,
twenty years ago. I squealed in mock delight. We ended up sucking drops of
sweetness from the flowers.
That day, and for months onwards, my daughter kept talking, drawing, and
singing about flowers |
