Fragrant

By Sayali Pawar

You would never pick me; I’m nothing.

You could always crush me; nothings tend to be invisible.

In this world where you decide messages over our colours, my artless mouth has yet to utter its first words. The lowest branch of hierarchy- an accidental twig surrounded by adorned landscaping.

It’s monumental for my family to have a flower, however skimpy, to bloom after generations weeded by struggle. If you ever happen to notice me, in which case I must ask if you’re fine; Why else would your neck be bent in a garden of abounding radiance? In hopes of finding something alike, you’d think me an easy-to-snap green wildflower, unable to make sense of a modest birth in midst of this alluring greatness. But humans often don’t realise- our bodies are how you see us but our souls run deeper, aligned right to the womb of the mother. And Earth never forgets; trees hold the knowledge ancient, so does the shrubs and grass and wildflowers. It’s your eyes who couldn’t sense me until this morning when I’ve been living for ages- knowing. And today marks the day in history as I opened my eye, to test all that I know, to grow wisdom out of facts.

The first light I saw half blocked by yet unfurled petals, reflected upon the colour unfathomable for my simple intellect- a sort of mixture of two primaries in the system. Lots of these in-between shades, posed for the first challenge just before a morning shiver ran down my hairy stem, enhanced by all the friction. A dew fell right on the heart bringing forth a whiff, the kind of attar that turns your heads, compelling me to stare ahead at a stark bunch of stars sparkling as the sun played with them.

‘Look who we have here! Happy birthday tiny one!’

‘Oh, you loud thing. Its shoot is literally thrice your head Jasmine.’ Interrupted the half sun coloured, bringing the unsolved mystery up again while I watched on baffled.

I never knew flowers from different families could talk to each other, let alone be friends.

‘It’s fine, this isn’t an embryonic hallucination. Jas and I have been here for generations with our roots mingled so we could send signals from an early age.’

‘And now you enter our network too. I just hope you don’t have a stiff stalk though.’

But isn’t it better? To not fracture under pressure?

I must’ve failed to transmit it only to end up asking myself another question.

‘Don’t sweat it kid, aunt gold will teach you the ways’ the fresh-petaled one, soothed. Opening all the pores down the length of my body to breathe deep, I tried to relax, feeling all my limbs static with the lack of current down here. The nascent celebration ends here, marking beginning of the greatest trial- learning to live.

Mari and Jas have been teaching me ways of creation and expression yet I find it better to explore with my vision than try imposing my views. All the ways I catalogued existence with, could never make up for the overwhelming beauty of it. Just the ability to witness others going about makes up for the vexing chirp of bugs nearby.

There’s a broken statue at the opposite dank corner where the neighbouring human buds throw in rocks and their half-eaten fruits. For ages they kept at it, trying to knock the statue down. It’s in the ditches now; face down, refusing to acknowledge any colour that it once gloried. Just a chipped blue wing jutting upwards is all I can see of it from here.

‘Don’t look there! it brings ill omen’ Marigold warned.

She had her blossoming not long ago yet seems wiser in more ways than the count of my petals.

‘Why... just…lonely… bird…harm…what’ I tried to turn my stimuli on other direction of receptor, clenching and unclenching, probably getting half a word out.

‘Lonely? Pfft. Can’t you see the bed of tulips on the other side of the wing? Ominous creatures they are, hogging on the sun only to coyly sneak past and spread the blanket of night and gloom all over our home.’

‘Ominous? Pfft’ imitated Jas from the lowest branch who had been pretending to not have heard us.

‘You say that just because the old man does. Alf answer me truthfully, aren’t they rather handsome? With their edge of ragged charm overpowering all of our presence.’

I couldn’t really see it from my bed across the thicket though.

‘Ah! That bloody bush. That’s the only obstacle saving them or Baba would’ve decapitated that miserable veil long ago then none of the spurts would ever find their way in our home’

‘I wish I was born on the other side of the hedge; their Gardner seems to treat them better...’ their blabber went on as I tuned out still peering at the fallen ceramic, its back uneven with a tiny crack running down to tail pointing the ground where it has turned sludge from the depression made by its own weight and the never diminishing pile of rotten fruits.

Just as to answer my curiosity to see what a bird looks like, a huge pair of wings soared above, covering the whole sky for five complete inhales, hovering above its fake cousin before dipping into disappearance again.

I was basking beneath the disappearing dews far off above that eludes the twinkling grass blades at every rising. The sky was playing in the loveliest hue of Iris and Lotus the moment our home was about to be not ours anymore.

The colony was yet to stir up when an unusually monotonous vibe rung through the ground, of hitting something solid on dirt- tuck, tuck, growing at each tuck startling every plant. My still habituating roots caught an overridden sense of panic permeating the whole of mass, as though mother herself woke up tremulous alerting us for… whatever?

The plethora of assumptions jamming over one another was cut short by a sonorous humming vibrating the air around. I can’t comprehend the hominoid language but it incites the aura with its repetitive pattern. It takes me a moment too long to realise the old man is the one chanting sounds as the whole garden held its breath. In that one moment, we were one, all of us, Tulipa to Rose, stretching every terminal fibre further, in a frail attempt to pass on their sets of languages around. Even the lifeless bird seemed to put in extra effort to not move at all.

The man’s first visual answered another doubt I did not know I had, about Marigold’s bias with her likeness to his attire.

Trying to scan every fragment of memory to seize the ambiguity settling like a thick cover slowly suffocating on the rolling planes, I’m still quizzed if it was the lack of breathing or the old man’s swift motion snapping Mari’s neck disengaging it from her wholeness and replicating with all of her siblings one after another, that started the end.

I don’t understand; she was young and healthy yet she left without sending a single defensive impulse. Just like that. A tremor passed around my tendril as the stem where Mari sung last evening glinted with her blood, a few nectar droplets dewing soil when her Baba wrangled her younger brother aggressively.

‘That’s what he does. These humongous war machines don’t care where they hit, crumpling our kids just because they can’t control their powers.’ A choked sound spoke out of Jas’s mouth which definitely wasn’t his.

The pronouncement made me reach for the bulging belly instinctively. A vivid image of two of the tiniest buds sparked all over nexus. Two more voiceless ones, to be born on an unnoticeable corner; or not.

‘Doesn’t matter if we believe him or not, all stand for one purpose only- to serve him to serve his god.’ Uttered Jas. Now closer to his original voice, sensing my rash imprudence.

‘What’s a god?’ I croak my inaugural words; a coarse edge, perceptible nonetheless.

‘That’s a good starter’ with a faint smile, he stood alone as all around us the world headed its wreckage; rather a beheading wreckage of each and every youthful hue snapped or strangled, pulled down or flattened underneath, met with same fate.

Though his attention never wavered from the casted down scene back to where Mari shaded two petals on her final moment adamant now to leave a reminder of her existence behind- a reminder to this nightmare.

The air around me grew hotter suddenly when the old man came into view moving from a newly clear tulip shade towards our way making frantic motions, his voice thrumming the still air giving it a red tint. How easily humans load their way of vision on us, not stopping to consider the puzzles in others’ equation.

‘We are not without’ Jas rasped, shaking the daze off.

‘I will be the new source. In his recent dive, the eagle must’ve somehow brought me these beings of various sorts, crawling and living and to be living soon. Remember Alfalfa, it’s either the old man or us. We die by his hand or make life with this deliverance at my pit. Roots never forget. Freedom will be ours. May you find the god.’

And before I could comprehend his bulb frustrated with this constant talk of unknown, a bright light reflected off of something in the old man’s striking hand, chopping Jasmine’s thick spine in a single swift motion as his thrumming essence oozed out; crystalised at lips that I never noticed before. His rootlet snaking around mine down a last resort of comfort, a feeble chance at easing this wildering agony, now felt on my weak palm.

‘Please, don’t suffer on your own’, I want to say but he wouldn’t hear with his ears trembling in mud. His eye wide open, fixated upon me, daring me to forget his last words. Reminding of his first. An overwhelming aroma clouding up on the whole home, on every bud and branch, drenching us in his sickly-sweet death, splattered over every conscience. Our fingers entwined holding me in place when all I wanted to do was crash down on the carpet of my friends. Of my family.

The old man straightened up, fuming heavy dark air out at the sight of Jas’s now exposed basin. With a burst of crimson wave he plunged straight, pulling remaining of his bare body, hands clutched together still.

‘Please don’t!’ I scream. He didn’t listen.

‘You’ve hurt them enough!’ he twisted harder.

‘Save the unborn…’ a hush, almost escaping my hearing range swam from his fingers, loosening grip on mine.

With a shattering thrust the man pulled all of my last friend apart, his entrails hanging mid-air, bits of flesh that suppled with life not long ago smeared all over face, camouflaging me and my anguish further.

In midst of the glaring canopy made of dull white fallen comrades, the man turned dragging the splintered body. Receding with pink silhouette, he left a measly barely talking wild flower surrounded by inexpressive arms of her amputated friends.

The lugging motion stopped just before the gate when something shone in the soaring eagle’s eye up above, disappearing in a flash as he dove for Jas’s grave where a glossy creature slithered away before I could see better, followed by the screeching bird. In a matter of two respires, the eagle had savagely clawed about half the garden trying to find his faster game. Its black shrieking, pulled the old man out of trance to lift his weapon running after the flying predator; blade for claw now one on one.

I had been blessed only to be cursed; born only to watch my loved ones die.

The garden, if I can even call it that, looks like the stories of hell Mari used to talk about. I want to tell someone the lore but there’s no one around anymore. So many fragments I heard, too many calculations to decipher, only to learn once my spine started giving up upon the cemetery of my family.

They kill us under the name of a god no one ever saw, promising to unite with the supremacy as they twist our necks. Fight each other to exploit us in different ways but, in the end, the battleground gets ravaged by a war of strangers. Strangers who put barbs, strangers who try breaking through it; strangers who make myths about us, strangers who don’t bother listening to ours.

And they keep coming back. Destroying our home, they always come back. Because how else would they hold the fences? How else would they block us from voicing our cases?

I’m too puny to know who wins here but it’s certain who loses everything. My future refuses to lose; the proud swelling buds shooting out into the dreamy vision I had while fearing death, now a hope of existence. My future will connect to the roots that lay deep within before they ever put on the barricade; my future will speak with the tales of my land. The land, rippling with life force drawn from carcasses, pulsating all into the opening buds; the heaven before my eye as it closes alas.

By Sayali Pawar