TO FLOWERS, SUNSHINE, FRIENDSHIP

To flowers 🌸🌻, sunshine ☀️

and friendship👭……

The earth revolved around the sun and brought us brighter, warmer, longer and in short more cheerful days, making us go out there enjoy sprawling lawns dotted with a plethora of wild tiny daisies and dandelions!!

I love how Wordsworth used the word ‘Host’ in “A host of daffodils” which means a numerous or plenty and also had the shade of intended pun of flowers being our host and welcoming us as their guests in their abode!

So on a bright sunny Sunday afternoon the four of us ; two mommies in constant drive to keep their girls busy and away from screens and busy outdoors, and these enthusiastically happy girls went strolling under the hot sun to a beautiful park and sat under a shady tree.

The green lawn was dotted with thousands of wild white daisies sporadically speckled in between with yellow dandelions. Since last couple of spring- summer I have developed a fascination for plucking the daisies or any wild flowers and weaving them into a floral braid; simply called as Gajra in a few Indian languages!

After weaving these braids I adorn my daughter’s hair with this makeshift or wannabe gajras. Somewhere in my heart I try to steal a little satisfaction – that though I can’t give her the heavenly experience of extremely fragrant Mogra (Jasmine) or Juhi or Jaaii gajras that I was extremely fortunate to have grown up with; I can give her some memories of ornamenting( if that’s a word) her hair with the most natural jewels- the flowers.

This urge to beautify oneself with flowers, this desire specially in women to beautify their hair with flowers has been our natural instinct since time unknown and makes us stay close to nature and earth always.

This time this joy was doubled by the fact that she was sharing this experience with her pal and for me too it was fun to make these floral braids for the two of them, make them sit patiently to click the show-offy pictures!

My friend and I went back to our respective memory lanes of buying mogra gajras and the occasions associated and missing them terribly. I remembered how all my friends at various stages in my life made Mogra or Jaaii gajras for me to beautify my long hair.

The very first time I boarded my flight from Mumbai on my first leg of Mumbai-Milan-Toronto journey, to join ‘Piya morè’ as a new bride, I remember there was this Caucasian young woman on the flight who must have bought an entire basket of may be about two dozen long strings of Mogra (Jasmine) gajras and hung them around her neck on both her shoulders, I like all other passengers was amazed by her.

But I didn’t realize then that one day I will miss my Mogra gajras so much that I would want to buy an entire basketful of them for myself!!

Hoping and praying that once again I am able to travel back to my home in India and this time give my daughter the same fragrant experience that makes you fall in love with Mogra and stay in love forever!! 🌸

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