The song of the little wild flower

It was the mid 80's, when as a tiny little girl I took my first trek. A medium sized hill, one of the many surrounding the little township of Digboi. It was a climb of about half and hour and we were about 5-6 kids accompanied by my father. Armed with sticks and water bottles, we quite fancied ourselves as climbers. There are certain memories of childhood that somehow manage to remain distinctly fresh, no matter how old you grow, this was one of them. I remember that the entire hill was like a basket laden with flowers, blue, violet and yellow. We had to push ourselves through these little shrubs to make our way up. My first and only question ( from a slightly non-talker of a child) to my father was, "Is this what a park looks like?" Digboi being the wilderness that it is, needs no parks and we hadn't had a sighting of a park as yet. I remember my father's laugh and ruffle in the hair, while he explained that "no, but this is better"...The little climb, yielded in one of the most spectacular views I have seen. Acres and acres of nothingness embraced the little hill with blue, yellow and purple, mingling with open skies....it remains till date one of the most important days in my life, the day I fell in love with wild flowers.






My fascination for Wild flowers, led me to visit the Yumthang valley, in Sikkim..much later in life. True to what I had imagined, the valley and the meadow surrounding it is full of absolutely fascinating riot of colors! A strange smell surrounds some of them, much like the smell of passion in a woman..of the wild wet earth on certain nights, lighted only by the moonlight. ..something so heady, that I've often wanted ot bottle it..and yet at the same time been immensely grateful that not everything can be packed..or bottled. The thing about wild flowers is that they are rarely like the grand rose drawing singular attention to its grandeur..but these arelike tiny little dots that make a spectacular graph all together...The Yumthang valley is full of rhododendron trees, made up of different colors, as well as other tiny flowers blossoms in clumps amidst the green grass, little patches of yellow and purple wherever you go.






My experiences with the fascinating flowers made me want to plant them in my garden too. I planted saplings, seeds..some plants survived, I got a flower or two, that would bloom sometime once a year and suddenly wither away. As a gardener I couldn't understand where I had gone wrong wrong..and then it dawned on me one day, that I was trying to capture a spirit in a bottle..a wild & free something and make it into a mannequined piece of art...Somethings are not meant to be tamed..if you try to do that they would rather whither and die...Have never tried to plant a wild flower since then..they belong to the wild..in spirit and form..whenever the call is strong to see them..I slip away..and they sing their beautiful songs and pass on their fragrances..free, uninhibited, lovely and un-tethered.

( Images courtesy Google)