Do flowers grow back petals?
Ashnia lay in the bed in the dusty attic. Bandages covered parts of her shrivelling body. She closed her eyes. Somewhere pain touched her. It seemed distant. She tried to recall her past and the sour memories came back tumbling after one another without effort. Her career lay in ruins much like her body, her account was running in debt and here she was all alone in the middle of nowhere. The wind rustled through the cracks in the wooden planks.
The house was falling apart, she noticed. It was the fourth time the thought had crossed her mind. There wasn't a lot to ponder over. The small hole in the wooden wall had gotten bigger. Perhaps, it was a mouse. Her mind drifted to the letter she had received last year in the mail. She was to be deported to India from America. Her Visa Application had been cancelled. The land which she had dreamt and fought to live on, was pushing her away. At that time, her body had quaked with rage. A rage which almost blinds you with fury. She remembered seeing red and nothing else. She didn't let her mind work too much, for it was seldom her friend. It didn't take long for it to throw the gory details of the past in her face and leaving her to cope with the grief.
Her deportation had occurred a year ago and the things that followed were any better. She had been standing on top of a hill that only sloped downwards with no end. Her accident had been the least painful event.
A flash of yellow swayed in the howling wind. Ashnia narrowed her eyes. Outside the window, a yellow flower dangled from the crack in the wall beside the window sill. It was unaware of its surroundings, living through the dirt that was thrown at it. Its petals were curled inward protectively. She smiled bitterly. They wouldn't be enough to shield it against the wind.
Watching the flower, Ashnia slowly dozed off into a peaceful sleep.
The old maid kept the food tray on the side table with a bang. Ashnia rubbed her eyes. The house had been left in Ashnia's name after the death of her father whom she hadn't met in a long time. With all doors closed in her face, she came here though on a stretcher. The maid was there when she came. Her aged face always bore a certain disdain. Towards whom she could never discover. Ashnia looked away, the yellow flower had spread the petals that fanned its head. She sighed, a week more and she would have to let the maid go.
The house stood on a gentle hill, on the outskirts of Jammu. To this day she didn't know how the living room or kitchen looked like. She had been bedridden ever since.
Sometimes she felt she was at the edge of the world. That she would fall down if she were to go on further.
Winter was around the corner. Its icy touch spread through the air like a disease. The bright green stem had lengthened. The flower stood unfazed. It didn't complain why it grew in the damp crack when it could have enjoyed the lushness of the valley that lay before it, teasing and luring him.
The sun went down and came back up. Its dim slanting rays touched the petals.
Was it just her or the flower had turned its head ever so slightly towards the window, as if trying to peek without getting caught. Warmth crept up her body.
Ashnia slept with a true smile on her lips.
She woke with a shudder. Large drops crashed against the metal roof overhead. The sound made it feel like they fell straight at her head. Her heart lurched. It had been raining that night. The rain was as heavy when her car had crashed into an incoming truck. The roads were too slippery, she shouldn't have taken a turn so fast. Something heavy pushed against her chest, making it difficult to breathe. Nothing was visible except the streaming water streaking the window of her car. She blinked and the blurry window was of her room. Anytime a pair of headlights would emerge and crash through. Something yellow emerged from the darkness and banged against her window. The dim yellow kept banging the window. She gasped. The cruel wind whipped the flower against the glass. It was trying to get in, she thought. In the midst of all the noise, the sound when it hit its little head was crystal clear. Every time she heard a thud, her eyes would shutter blinking away the film of tears that formed over them. She called out, "Somebody opened the window!" But the wind cut her voice away. She dropped her head on the pillow. It was just her and the flower, isolated by the wind. The night seemed to go on forever. She could hear distant screaming. Was it hers from when the glass had shattered her windshield echoing in her mind or was she screaming now? She didn't know when but at some point in the dark lonely night she fell asleep. But she knew one thing. When sunlight flooded the damp room and she could feel the warmth of the light through her eyelids, she didn't want to open her eyes. What would she see outside her window? The upturned roots or the empty stem without its head.
It was neither.
There were a few petals hanging from the head but some still stood erect. It had lost two of its leaves. It seemed that sunlight was holding the dainty petals in place. They looked brighter than before. Perhaps she had never paid it much attention. But the flower was there!
Downstairs, the maid frowned when laughter flooded through the broken house. It was the first time she heard her mistress laugh. It was gay and tinkled with joy. It turned out to be a bright morning indeed. Ashnia blinked back tears of happiness. "Oh! You survived the crash and you are still standing." The flower stood a little bent towards the window, "oh! How happy I am for you?"
A soft breeze flew and it turned its head towards her. She sighed and whispered, "Thank you." The breeze pushed and the flower bent more acknowledging her gratitude.
. . . . . .
She watched the flower gain strength through the window. It straightened slowly towards the sun peeping through the mountains. She didn't mind when the maid changed her pillowcase to wash, something for which she would have fought against the maid. Verbally, of course. She just hated the smell of fresh laundry. Even the stale curry was bearable.
"Do flower grow petals again?"
She asked the old maid sweeping the floor of the attic. She looked up for an instant, muttered to herself, shook her head absently and went back to work. For an old lady, she was swift in her chores, especially when you tried to talk to her.
Ashnia chose the attic instead of the small bedroom because she couldn't sleep on her father's bed. The attic seemed a better choice. It was empty save for the bed on which she lay and a side table on which the maid kept or banged the food tray three times a day. She smiled on seeing the earthen pot on the wooden table. One day, when her wounds would heal, she would walk to the sill, gently scoop out the flower and plant it in the pot beside her. She couldn't ask the maid to do it. Her callused hands would uproot it, tearing it apart. "It's just a wild flower" the old lady had muttered under her breath that day, Ashnia pieced it together. Did the flowers origin mattered more than its beauty? Her eyes travelled back to the gay flower. Did the fact that it was common subdue its individual uniqueness?
She slept before she could find an answer.
Two days later, the maid kept her packed bags on the dusty threshold. She was wrapped in warm shawls for winter had finally settled in. Clouds formed a low ceiling over the mountains. She reluctantly looked back at the wooden staircase that led to the upper floor. Her feet felt heavy as stone when she climbed them. No matter how much she swept the room, it always remained dusty.
She stood at the door, unsure whether to enter or not.
Ashnia's bandages were hidden. Only one was visible, around her forehead.
Ashnia lay underneath piles of warm quilt handsewn from patches of colourful cloth. . Looking at her, the maid felt as if summer were very near, though it had just left. Her face seemed fuller and her cheeks were rosy as if touched from the innocence of a child. Underneath the heavy pile, she somehow seemed lighter than when the maid had first come to work here months ago. The maid sighed inwardly. She had to leave her today. Her eyes twinkled underneath the bandages. "She would be able to look after herself. Her wounds have healed better." The lady thought. She gave a curt nod, the closest resemblance of a goodbye she could give.
Ashnia could no longer pay her and she needed to send money to her grandchildren or so she explained to herself as she went down the stairs. The maid had come halfway when a sudden shriek made her run back towards the room, as fast as her swollen knees would allow. Tears were flowing down Ashnia's face and she let out a howl of sorrow.
The maid fumbled to the side of the bed. Her anxiousness was mixed with the awkwardness of not knowing what to do.
"Madam, I will stay. Oh please don't cry. I will write to my son. He will understand once he knows about your condition...." Or so the wrinkled face of the maid kept blabbering guiltily but she wasn't the reason of her sudden sorrow. Loneliness had long since ceased to bother her. Behind the maid, the last petal had fallen along with the head of the flower. Days after the storm, the stem supporting the flower could hold on no more and uneventfully dropped down from its humble abode to the chasm of despair. It lost its grip to the dirt in the crack to which it had clinged so desperately in the midst of the destruction of the storm.
The maid couldn't know what Ashnia had lost. Her last ounce of hope.
In the days after, Ashnia, though heartbroken, regained her physical strength. The flimsy bandages unraveled to gift her mobility. A month had passed since the view of her window had become vacant.
The maid kept the suitcases near the door. But this time they were not hers. Ashnia stood on the window sill looking out towards the valley she had yearned to see from the confinement of her bed. She hadn't realised that the simple act of seeing could give her comfort. Now that she had to step into the real world, of mobile phones and the internet from which she had been cut off from the past few months. The problems she had been running from came back to her. Her flat was vacant because she had failed to pay the rent, her belongings were most probably boxed in the attic of a friend and her ex fiance was happily married to a girl that had once been her best friend. The problems she had worried over anxiously till now didn't seem so big. She was finally back on her feet.
The maid called out her name from below. Before leaving, she grabbed the pot kept on the side table. A yellow flower grew in it. She had bought it from the nearby nursery. She had even brought along the old maid who had been suspicious of her excitement. But she couldn't explain why it was so important to her. Partly, because she herself didn't quite understand. And she was okay with it. The finer things in life can sometimes not be explained, but only felt. She had chosen the flower from the array of eager yellow heads looking at her. She chose the flower that resembled most the one outside her window. But she knew that she would never find its exact replica. For it had gone through storms with her, a storm she could not have faced alone.
On the doorstep, she hugged her maid. Her manner even though had been distant, she was the person closest to her during these months. Ashnia looked back towards the wooden house for one last time and looked at the pot in her hand. Life throws unexpected things at you and you may not get what you wanted. But you always take away something better from it. The yellow flower looked back at her and she smiled, "Ready for an adventure?".
She got in the taxi waiting for her to enter an entirely different world where her coming discomforts would be masked with increasing incoming problems.
In the calm of that spring morning, she had failed to notice something. In the crack outside the window, fresh dirt had deposited. A tiny green tendril sprouted out of the dust. Who knows what its stem would bear?
But one thing is for sure, life always finds a way to move on.....
/Published in the anthology 'Far from reality'/
Available on Amazon