Coral jasmines, pavizhamalli…..
Childhood: Nilambur, every monsoon, without fail… The
dilapidated house knew life only when one of us came from our towns for the
vacation to stay with our grandparents for a week or so. The rubber trees stood
all around the house and made the day seem like twilights. The partition of the
house had resulted in the construction of two wells, one unused and the other
minimally used by the workers who would pull out water in aluminium pails to
wash off fresh mud from their feet. Every evening the grown-ups would sit on
the parapet skirting the outer wall of the old house and talk about cousins,
their childhood and make me (then harldy 5 years old) imitate Narasimha Rao. In
the midst of their conversations, I would walk away towards the well, and
gather the tender flowers of the night jasmine tree. The pale flowers with the
orange stalks lay scattered on the wet earth around the well, fragile yet still
fresh. On the tree, buds would dangle at the end of the branches, waiting for
the night to open them slowly and to slowly kiss out their fragrance. In a daze
induced by the fragrance of the flowers and the damp earth, I would walk. To my
tongue, which had been accustomed only to Tamizh, the name of the flower became
a tongue twister, to be forgotten every time our car pulled out of the gates of
the house towards our home. During a lull in their conversation, someone would
be realise that I was walking in the dense shrubbery at dusk, which was a haven
for snakes, coming out to cool themselves. And with this realisation, I would
be dragged away, to the house, where the lamp would be lit and ask smeared on
my forehead and where the white flowers with the orange stalks would be relegated
as a background hum of my grandmother’s prayers.
Adolescence: Chennai, the compound wall of our flat… The
pavizhamalli tree could hardly be seen from the terrace because it stood in the
shade of the banana plant. Some mornings, when I went to drop the garbage bags,
I went near the compound wall and looked at the tree, no flowers, only the buds
remained. I knew my neighbour maami would gather the fallen flowers and pluck
the ones from the tree for pujas. Never had I asked her to spare some for me, never
had the thought risen in me that I could wake up early to pluck them before she
did. My flowers would only wilt away, I thought, hers would adorn the ceramic
hair of goddesses, and they would lie masked in the smoky smells of incense
sticks. And yet, some evenings, I would feel a sorrow that those flowers that
were a part of my childhood notions of belonging, were not accessible to me, in
my very home. Perhaps the first lessons in loss; perhaps those flowers were a
part of my life in an entirely different way.
Train: Kakar’s The Ascetic of Desire… Chennai to New Delhi. Constant
references to night jasmine. Sensuality, fragrance and night jasmines… Kakar,
you have added new meanings to my pavizhamalli…. From the innocence of my
childhood to the womanly desires in me, now multitudes speak through those
tender blooms.
Dawn and Childhood again: An early winter morning, fresh
from an outdoor sleep, four people walk back to their hostels in a university
campus in the middle of a city. Piyuli, pavizhamalli, night jasmine, coral
jasmine….. they lie scattered on the road, in a corner, where only those with
the most sensitive nostrils can trace them. They smile at us, four people drunk
with the happiness of the dew-drops on our hair. We laugh and gather them and
shake the tree, and more flowers fall on us, like the divine floral showers
from heaven. The flowers settle on our hair and we don’t shake them off. Let them
be, we say, and walk on. Later, as we nap on the wet lawn, all of smell of
nature- of pavizhamalli, earth and grass. Childhood again.
The one at my window: In the morning, I collected the
flowers and put them in a little bowl on the table. That afternoon, I broke my
leg and the bowl lay full only with withered petals. At 2 in the dawn, a
strange feeling wakes me up, and I don’t have to look out to know what it is. The
pavizhamalli wafts through my window and settles on my bed, on my eye lashes
and on the kunnikuru on my window-sill. They smile; when in the depths of the
mist, when the mist has covered the tree, they come to me for warmth. But do
they know, that in my solitude, their arrival has been my salvation?
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