For Aai

This is for you Aai
(I had written this sometime back)

Aarghhhhh! Not again…where’s the key? I mumbled to myself, digging into the pockets of my bag. I could feel the elusive key as I dug deeper into the bag, but instead of producing it, my fingers touched something soft and prickly. Rose petals…some soft, some crushed and leaves with the thorns intact. The aroma of the petals engulfed my senses. My thoughts went back to the not so distant past.
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Every trip back home meant coming back with flowers – roses, mogras,
jai-jui, lily, raat-rani, marigold…Most of them used to wilt by the time I reached Pune.
“What’s the point if they are not going to last long? My bag smells, the flowers make a mess…” I tried telling my mother, hoping to dissuade her from giving me fresh beautiful flowers every Monday morning. It didn’t work of course.
“It’s a ‘Best of Luck’ flower. The flower will bring you luck and success in whatever you do,” my mother used to tell me, thrusting another flower in my hand. I used to shrug my shoulders and plonk the flower in the zipped pocket of my bag.
For days, the dried-up flowers used to stay inside the pocket except when I used to turn the bag upside down looking for a lost key, a pen or perhaps a piece of paper. The whole process used to irritate me, wondering why mothers behaved the way they did.
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Now, when life has changed irrevocably, the care, love and concern of the giver leaves me with a lingering pain. This is for you Aai

Comments

  1. really nice...lovely text... :)
    keep it up and write more often...please... :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. really nice...lovely eulogy :)
    keep writing often...please :)

    ReplyDelete

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