When she blooms in the night, like stars in the night sky , she used to fill the air and my heart with an alluring scent. When I was a child, my neighbour had a Jasmine plant. Her long hands had grown in every direction hugging a dwarf mango tree. Every girl in my locality was an admirer of her. Every day, dressed up like a bride, she will uncover millions of white buds. We were jealous of her beauty and we all wanted to steal at least a part of it somehow. But we could hardly convince our neighbour to let us pluck her flowers.
When I saw the picture of an indoor Jasmine plant in a pot, all i could think was about the beautiful Jasmine my neighbour had. Many nights I had waited just to watch her buds bloom, since her fresh scent was intoxicating. We used to hang around her, for the flowers she might drop. We used to groom her and bend the branches of the Mango tree for her to reach. How devastated we used to be, when many of her limbs get broken during every monsoon. But she would always come out of every trouble, and regain her elegant self quickly.
As I grew, and as she became older and older, it became so easy to forget about her. When I saw the online picture of the Jasmine plant, I tried to recollect “when did she die?”. I don’t know. May be someone did euthanasia.
How we forget about things that mattered the most to us? Broken glass bangles used to be treasured by us and now we dump them in a trash can without a second thought. Remember those days, when we used to keep the peacock feathers in our notebooks, for it to give birth? Though, we knew we are being stupid, it didn’t stop us from dreaming about beautiful colourful little feathers born out of her. Today, we plan our dreams, using calculators. Sneaking out of house, from the watchful eyes of mother just to play in the rain used to be our fun. Today, we curse our fate for leaving home without an umbrella on a rainy day. We have changed .I think, growing up is synonymical to losing touch with who we used to be. We let our little self die inside.
The little kid in us used to be happy about the little things we have. Even a torn cloth was enough to built a castle. Now we have more than enough but nothing is enough. Because we feel nothing is going as planned; missing the beauty of uncertainties. We need some reminders in our life, to keep in touch with our childhood, so that, we don’t stress out about the unwanted things we need.
So I decided to bring a small Jasmine plant home to get a piece of my childhood back.
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