No such thing as Dead Flowers

February saw an abundance of flowers on my study table.  

I write this as February makes its foreseeable pass and tiptoes into March. I write this as a shameless poet, yearning for a short lived three-course meal over three weeks and not four. I write this yearning for a warmth that early spring could offer in hot chocolate mugs and knitted vests, in February, but not the kind in March, that comes in rising degrees and skewed golden rays every morning. I write this as my study table glances over at the concrete wall on the house next door while an abundance of brown petals remain scattered across. No space for a book, or a paper, no pen, no laptop. Only perhaps a clay mushroom and a clay toad, resting in their brown garden. If I could call this home, they could call it too. 

February was short, a much needed short after a January that seemed like a year. On 2nd, I bought flowers. Jasmine, rose, tuberose, marigold, hibiscus, petunia, baby's breath... Memory fails me, colours don't. I placed them, some near a deity's feet, encircled and well shaped, some tangled in eloquence, curled with fairy lights, glowing flowers and flowered lights. Some placed in the new flower vase I bought. The water spilled from beneath - the clay had a crack that escaped my eye. On 12th, I wore my fairy top and jeans, went to the cafe I longed for, ate ramen and got roses. Lover's ache, lover's race. He gave me more on 14th. Pink, white, red, yellow, orange. 'Bangalore rose', each priced at twenty. I took a rickshaw that day to visit my best friend. She has abandoned her years long Delhi-affair and finally finds rest in her small home town. She identifies herself no more, and neither this place she calls her 'home'. 

Strange how we got stuck with in-between identities, phases of identities, identities escaping from one another, multiple identities, and identities long lost. This June, I shall turn 25 and hit a quarter of a century. At my workplace, when they ask me to describe myself in one line, I wish to scream and tell them I have no idea. I could not describe myself in the length of 24 years let alone in the length of a singular sentence. I know myself only as much as I know how to do Math. How insulting to ask someone to 'tell more' about themselves, how cruel to put it in one line, how brutal to even appreciate later what 'more' they tell about themselves in corporate tones and measured sentences. 

March saw a fiery spring arrive.

Between North Kolkata lanes and the blind alleys of my little home town, pink bougainvillea trees under the bright sun remained exactly the same. As I walked back home from work, I stopped by turns and corners of the street, took pictures on my phone, crinkled my eye brows at the sun and breathed in a good look of pink paper flowers hanging mid-air. On 7th, I visited Kalighat with my best friend, walked, talked, ordered cafe tea priced at 200, and ate fish fry from an old roadside eatery. On 13th, we landed in Purulia - the land of 'laal maati' and 'laal palash'. Purulia burnt our skin and gave us an upset stomach. Purulia also let us pass by old fold mountains now blown up by dynamites to carve out roads and bridges and dams; let us walk through acres and acres of land with spreads of palash flowers, 'Flame of the Forest', and we sang Tagore amongst strangers playing Holi. The smell of the red earth lingers everywhere in Purulia. The women there toil. The children toil in play. The men, in resistance. 

We stayed at my best friend's grandmother's house. When we arrived home with fists and cotton pockets full of palash, her grandmother told us to keep them in a mug of water overnight. In the morning, the water would turn orange and red and yellow - palash flowers spill their colours when submerged in water overtime. I wondered if I could paint a picture with red water or dye a cloth with it. 

However, creativity fails me when it comes to praxis. My thoughts reside in my mind and they remain unfulfilled with the passage of time. What a short life time with so much to read, write, draw, eat, collect, capture, make, sing, visit. I could not bring palash flowers back home but I bought red roses from the local flower market to compensate. What's in a name? 

April took its sweet time to be cruel. 

I April-fooled myself wearing plastic flower clips on my hair on 1st, in Gopalpur, Orissa instead of real flowers that I wore by the beach when I visited Pondicherry. I took a secret oath after this trip to never go for long rides with parents. I was in a horrible state of mind, suffered from claustrophobia in the stuffed up car and fought endlessly with the whole family. In a few days time, I met all my friends in the city. The time matched perfectly - everyone was together for the first time in a long time. My school friends, my college friends, friends that turned into enemies, boyfriend's friends, girlfriends' girlfriends, and my sister's friends. Except for my tween sister's friends, the rest of us ended up at my college fest, the fest that altered me forever. 

I lost my wallet to a kleptomaniac in the girls' bathroom. I have been a victim of romanticizing the Girls' Bathroom trope despite being aware of my lifelong victimhood in frankly everything. Social media strays us anywhere we like to go and god forbid a girl has a hobby of doom scrolling and reading anything that is remotely feminine. However, I have been made cautious. My wallet was lost but in return I was sent a bouquet of many tiny chrysanthemums, wrapped in newspaper and strings. Strangers left them in the auditorium, on the seat right next to mine, where the bouquet lied forgotten. I gathered them and decided it was a gift from heaven, a little compensation for stealing my favourite wallet that also carried my ear rings and a love letter. A stranger's boon for a stranger's bane.

I dreamt a lot that month. Nightmares mostly. On 15th, we celebrated the Bengali New Year. I loved how I looked that day, loved what I ate. All Bangladeshi food, with my family of Bangladeshi origins. We came back home with tuberoses to mark a new start and make the house smell like poetry. On 28th, my student Amina wished me morning with a plastic pot of plastic red flowers, and I blinked my eyes thrice in unimaginable surprise. It resides on our classroom shelf as a souvenir of joy.  

May was a celebration of love and humidity.

My parents celebrated being together for 26 years. How crazy! They started off as lovers at my age, now spouses, parents, frenemies. I look at them and wonder if they shall be kinder this time when they know their daughters shall become adults with lovers, likeable and unlikeable friends, kindness and betrayals. May they witness everything they went through in their daughters but with lesser violence, more patience. 

I did not get many flowers this month. I sweated in classrooms, train compartments, under slow fans in a colleague's flat. I sweated even inside artificially cold temperatures in tall buildings with big floors. I saw, felt and breathed sweat more than any food in May. I cannot wait for the vacations to start. Being an educator today mostly comes with countless corporate burdens but this, an undeniable perk. 

June welcomed me into a strange quarter.

I just turned 25. As I sit at my study table on a Sunday morning, a cup of tea beside and no deadlines looming, I look at the dried bunch of peach and yellow roses in the glass vase. It used to be a bouquet - wrapped in white papers and a pink bow tied. My lover's gift, besides chocolates and endless love. Another glass bottle holds a pink rose and baby's breath- a child's gift, my student, for my birthday. Glass bottles that once held Keventer's milkshakes are now makeshift flower pots. They hold my life together, and every colour lets me know how I feel when I can think in comprehensive language no more. 

By next Saturday, many things shall change. The city shall feel emptier than ever, and my home town, the remains of a ghost. As I write sitting by the window, with my table again enveloped in dried petals of brown, peach, yellow, my toad and mushroom resting in this garden, I feel like a writer, a poet. When I come back to this blog, I shall wish to puke myself as I read these words I have written over and over and over. But I shall leave them here, without deletion, without deconstruction, without analysis. I shall leave everything here and find a place where I shall be. As a shameless writer, this is my letter to posterity, unedited. 

[Written over the course of five months, with zero consistency and an unwired mind. Read with caution, cringe may be overlooked]