Late Bloom

The colourful ball full of air rolled over the green grass under the light of late winter morning. It kept rolling and then it came to a stop. Two pairs of small hands approached the ball and picked it up and then they sent it away flying through the air.



The ball went up for a while, it covered the view of the Sun and its colours shone as the Sun’s rays tried their best to deal with this sudden presence in their way and then the ball came down and once again reunited with the grass below.



This time the ball fell near Dipta who had come to the park to play with her little sister Netra. Both the sisters were still in school. Although Dipta had started to prefer friends her own age, her mother made sure Dipta spent time looking after her younger sister as well.



Dipta lightly jogged over to where the ball was and picked it up. But something had caught her eyes even before she picked up the ball. It was a flower which had bloomed wide, opening itself to the daylight displaying its shades of red.



“It is a dahlia,” said Netra who had come running over



Dipta looked at her sister, “How do you know?”



“Grandma told me when we used to come to the park together. She is here now,” replied Netra



It had been a year since their grandmother had passed away. Dipta was more understanding of reality than her younger sibling, yet she went along with Netra’s words.



“Here, where?” asked Dipta



“Among the flowers, she is one. She told me that one day if I cannot find her anywhere then that would mean she had become a flower here,” replied Netra



Dipta for the first time in her life came across the hint of what it meant to grow up because in that moment she too wanted to believe that their grandmother was out there somewhere amongst the flowers watching them play and smiling at times.



Dipta noticed the smile on Netra’s face and said, “Let’s bring grandma home, let’s grow a flower.”



“But how will she come home?” asked Netra



“You must have seen that flowers fall off after some time. So, when her flower falls, she will grow into another one. It will be the one we grow,” said Dipta with a smile, feeling quite happy about it, pulling herself apart from the reality of the world and deciding to sit beside the belief that meant more and felt more.



“I know how to grow a flower,” said Netra, “I asked the gardener once and I have written what he said.”



And surely, she had written it and it went beyond words with crayon-coloured drawings to explain it all. It was the perfect explanation in a little girl’s world but Dipta who had long stepped out of it was having a difficult time going around it.



“I got it,” said Dipta to her sister and the next day she went to the society gardener to understand how to make the flower a reality.



The society gardener smiled when he heard everything Dipta had to say and he asked her to come with her sister the next day.



The next day, both the sisters visited the gardener.



“Look at this, this is the seed of the plant which will grow into the flower you want,” said the gardener showing the seed to Netra and the three of them walked over to the park to plant it.



“I will look after it for a while and then you take it home in a flower pot,” said the gardener and both the sisters returned home smiling.



The sisters were very attached to it, they made sure to pass that part of the park on their way to the school and back from it. They rejoiced when it first appeared from the soil and the thought of bringing it home with them one day added to their happiness even more.



As days went by and turned into a month, Netra started becoming distant from the flower and what it meant, she had started developing a fascination for other things she had seen out there in the world, as it is with most small kids.



Although the plant was being grown on Netra’s innocent words and the belief that had held on to her attention, Dipta had grown closer to its existence now.



Dipta got the plant home in a flower pot and looked after it, just like the gardener had said. One morning of the parting winter, Dipta sat beside the flower in the balcony and as the daylight filled into the world, she spoke, “Isn’t it a beautiful morning grandma.”

Written by Anuran Chatterji

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