Morning rendezvous with little white stars

They invite me, they tease me. They taunt me, they plead with me. Sometimes they hide, challenging me to find them. And then there are the ethical dilemmas they put me through!

It’s that time of the year. The Chameli (Jasmine) beckons every morning. The milky white little stars dangling from their green canopy hold exclusive rights over a part of one’s morning schedule for all the months that they stay over. They arrive in mid or late August and hold court all through September and October, often staying on in November and sometimes even hanging on till well into the new year! Their arrival is preceded by keen inspections of the climber for signs of buds forming. And with the spotting of the first buds begins the wait for the first lot of flowers to blossom. The buds take their own sweet time, leaving one to speculate on which one will flower first. And amid this speculation it often so happens that one fine day the first flower appears at a spot that was nowhere on the inspection radar. As if mocking one with, “Ha! Got you! Didn’t see me coming, did you?” And thus begins the game….

Fresh flowers are required to be placed every morning on the prayer table before the pictures of prophet Zarathustra, Dasturji Kukadaru Saheb (a revered Parsi priest from the nineteenth century), Sai Baba and my grandparents. Some years back my aunt’s and then Dad’s pictures joined them. While the rest of the year round these flowers are sourced from the market, in Chameli season there’s more than enough homegrown supply. Thus picking flowers is an important task and frankly, when this task landed up in my lap, I had not imagined the special relationship I would end up forming with this evergreen climber which stretches from one corner of our verandah to the other and then proceeds to go off in any and every direction it fancies. Believe me, this daily flower plucking is no drab, mechanical activity.

Every single day the new lot of flowers invite me. They tease me, they taunt me, they plead with me. Sometimes they hide, challenging me to find them. A particular corner may look bereft of any flowers but just moving a branch a little or changing the line of sight may reveal a flower or two, maybe more. This tempts one to look for more, to maximise the day’s “catch”. Meanwhile the ones that are higher up, completely out of reach, thumb their nose at me or simply give me the royal ignore.

This daily activity also brings forth dilemmas and throws up ethical questions. The mind vacillates between this opinion and that. Should one be plucking flowers in the first place? Don’t flowers belong to the plant they grew on? Yes, they do but what’s wrong with picking part of the daily produce? It’s not as if one completely wipes off all the flowers from the plant! In peak season, it’s not humanly possible either.

Coming to the very purpose behind the flower picking, do gods, prophets, saints and the dear departed really want or ask for flowers to be placed before them? Maybe not, but there’s no harm if this leads to some sweet aromatic flowers finding a place inside our homes!

Doesn’t counting the day’s “catch” and strutting about over a big “conquest” take away from the romantic charm of forging a tender relationship with these beauties of nature? It sure does but can’t a mere mortal be allowed an eccentric habit or two…?

When there’s plentiful supply, one can get a bit picky. So while the large, robust ones are quickly plucked off, there’s some dithering over the smaller, weaker ones. Again, a couple of ethical questions… Why discriminate? Aren’t they all equal in the eyes of the Creator? And if the healthy one is picked and its weaker neighbour left behind, won’t it feel left out, lonely? Oh come on, they don’t really feel or think! …. Or do they…?

Anyway, these questions and dilemmas are left behind when one walks away carrying a plateful of fragrant bliss. Knowing fully well that as the days pass, there will be fewer on the plate. Then a smaller plate will be required and the day will come when the palm will be enough to carry the day’s “catch”. Finally, the last of the flowers will take its bow, leaving behind a promise to return the next season… and to pick up our affair from where we left off….