patience

Picking jasmine is a simple task for a person who never tries. Offering them to family, friends and neighbours, after picking, is even simpler to someone who never understands. Growing them is simpler than attempting to pick them. Living on welfare from sunny days, showing her glamour after a shower in the monsoon rains, and playing around with my veiled friend seems a simple task for someone who never felt simplicity. Picking jasmine is about patience, observation and selflessness.

A meter long bamboo stick with a steel hook attached to one end is used to pick the distant buds. The close ones are hand picked since reaching them is never difficult. The hook is not like a normal question mark style hook. It is more like a v-shape so that the bud is held in between and when pulled it gets stuck within the v-groove and hence removed from the plant. Imagine the sorrow of their mother when the children she bears are plucked one by one before they open their eyes to this world. How happy their mother would be if she could smell the scent of her soul from within the children she bears as they tenderly open their eyes at dusk. Lucky for her that not all her children are plucked, some hide behind their mother’s shelter and some who are still new born are deliberately left untouched. The ones picked are brightly lit in the late afternoon sun, white as a sunny cloud, soft as cotton and having a grin on their face while about to open their eyes.  Sometimes a hundred of them or even two or more are picked daily.

Now she is old, tall and out of normal reach and hence to reach her children one need to climb and walk along a thin four-meter high wall. As soon as up there can see the cute little ones humming with the wind. And yesterday was one of those days that my friend teased and argued that she never understood why the cute little ones are taken away from their home. As I tried to pick a distant little one, my friend, the invisible wind, she moved the young one away. And again and again she did so until I stopped. She was so amused, caressed the little bud from where she was then came to me and asked me if I would dance and left. Suddenly from behind I felt as if the waltz had just begun, and whispered in my ears to thank me for not taking away that precious little reflection of a mother. I almost fell off the wall but I knew she would never let me loose but hold.

Am I sad that I may never see yesterday again? I am indeed until I felt a moment of yesterday as always as how I remember my past. Yesterday swept slowly into the cold but clear starlit soft light of early morning. Almost a quarter past one in the morning is not unusual this month to walk slowly along the sleeping roads and closer to the vast park with the sleeping trees. My whispering footsteps or my jazzy heartbeat is not enough even to kindle an already snoring fire of a giant rain tree in the park. Slowly, quietly I walked along and finally reached the mosque compound to see many more hurrying as if like an army of ants fleeing from a flood and into their tunnel of homes. I think that their home is designed with a proper drainage system of additional tunnels or else they would not run into their homes again and again every time it floods. Or are they drowning themselves unknowingly into a place of worship. Connection almost went off, while in my silent prayers, when I sensed a sudden hiss from behind. I felt from behind the same quiet, cold embracing that almost shook me off my feet. My friend is here to pray with me, I thought, and closed my eyes. Patient indeed I am in the waiting, that I might hear her prayers one day.