Flowers at my feet and stars above me

Glimpses of my garden

“The earth laughs in flowers,” as Emerson said, and I’m in love with those laughs. I love the colours and fragrances of flowers. I spend some time every day to add more of those beauties to the little space outside my home.

These are days of monsoon in Kerala, however. The monsoon rains are not friends of flowers. In fact, nothing but grass grows in the season. My garden is covered with lush green grass now. Even the potted plants don’t bloom in the rains. By the time my weeding reaches the end of the garden, it’s time to begin all over again because the weeds thrive in the rains. Like Mr Lamb in Susan Hill’s story, I call it my weed garden now. When the rains subside colours will descend in my garden once again.

I love rains too. They have their own romance. I imagine the rain as the mating of the heaven with the earth. Yesterday I rode my scooter for about ten kilometres in a heavy downpour without wearing my raincoat. The helmet shielded my head. I loved the gush of water all over me as I rode along the village road with hardly any vehicle or people in sight. I reached home drenched to the marrow of my bones. That was an ecstatic rendezvous with the rain.

The rain can murmur eternal secrets in your ear if you care to listen. The rain can metamorphose into a sweet melody in your soul. It can revive memories and make you cry or laugh. The rain is a magic. I have watched it mesmerise the little river that flows down a few yards from my home.

But the rain steals the colours from the garden. You can’t have the best of everything obviously. The flowers will return soon to my garden. And the stars will twinkle in my sky too once the monsoon recedes. In the meanwhile, let me “listen to the rhythm of the falling rain”, as Dan Fogelberg sang.