These red flowers are locally known as Krishnachura. A big tree of these red blooms stood before our small rented apartment back when I was a child. Every summer afternoon, during vacations, I used to sit on the balcony and play while with every gentle breeze that swayed its branches, the flowers used to paint the concrete road red. The same tree stood opposite my school, and in one of the classes, when my seat was just beside the window, I used to watch the tree blooming in fiery red. The flowers are of a gentle nature. They do not stay long if you pick them up. Neither are they used in worship. They just sway in the breeze and fall like a drizzle. The leaves, too, in autumn fall like a soft yellow drizzle, and more often than not, I used to stand beneath it and giggle in joy. Life was simple and full of joy from the little things. I noticed the nature changes with the seasons. The flowers were lost with childhood, while we moved places and schools. In the rat race, I had almost forgotten about them. Then my favourite show had a scene with these blooms. Perhaps they signified love in the scene. Of holding on to it. Or perhaps the impending idea of sacrifice that was to follow. After all these blooms were named so by Radha, as the legend goes, because she used to sit beneath such a tree with her lover. The scene took me back down memory lane again. I walked back to the school lane where the tree still stands, the red flowers often crushed by the ignorant cars and pedestrians, and I had a realisation. The reason to attach emotions to nature is simple, because in the ever-changing course of life, some things never change. And those constants are rare and precious. The memories and the feeling. Hold on to them and find joy in the simplest beauty of nature.
~ Suranya