My Latest Bloom!

At 8 in the morning, soon after it was placed in this container.

At 9.30 in the evening---in full bloom!

This morning at 7.

At 9.30 in the morning.

My lotus plant, complete with two pink buds about to
burst into song, arrived yesterday. It came in a thick
polythene bag, traversing the great, wide plains of
Assam, across flooded fields of rice, rivers in spate,
and a sea of humanity! For that is what you travel
through in summer, in India. It must've crossed
fields of its own kin, maybe, cascades of pink and
white, in ponds flushed with the night's rain and
the constant drizzle of the days before. But
still, vying for space to breathe. And bloom!
But inside the bag, in a place so foreign for an
aquatic plant, it showed signs of fatigue. One long
wilted stalk, and the other less so, still drooped
after being freed of polythene bondage.
I placed the plants in a karhai, a utensil as ubi-
quitous as rice in Indian kitchens. Soil and slush
does the needful for water plants. The leaves, browned
by the heat, should look better in a week's time.
The karhai sits on partial shade, under the palms
heavy with green and yellow fruit. Where birds, bees,
butterflies an even an occasional marsh mongoose love
to haunt!
And as for me, I have a spring in my step and a song
in my heart. I'm the proudest owner of a lotus plant!!