Hosta plantaginea (A Flower Poem)

Hosta plantaginea

I first noticed you

On the Columbia campus

Perhaps during the Orientation

Ceremony

The landscape workers

Meticulously pruning, spreading

The aromatic mulch mixed with

Compost

Your white jasmine-like slender

Flowers immediately pulled me

Born in a tropical village with

Luscious green and abundant flowers

Spread throughout the year

I’m drawn to flavors and flowers

But the sweet scent, varied pleasing 

Aromas of flowers always

Captivates me; it takes me decades

Back into childhood and

Energetic youthful wanderings

Then

I’d lie idly happily

In my mother’s lap

With a gardenia peeping from

Her oily hair

Playing with my sisters

And their loquacious friends -

Always smiling and giggling

With innocent secretive 

Discussions

Scores and scores of

Functions, marriage ceremonies,

Interesting discourses, plays,

Dance and music programs

They all had fragrances

Roses, jasmines, Michael champaka –

You name it from Tuberose to the most 

Exotic type of Oleander 

The ladies in south India

Loved the flowers

They pampered them

Every house had it then

They have it even now

You’d see in the front yard

Near the gate

And

On the terrace

Beckoning the night stars

And

Offering rendezvous for the young lovers

Copyright 2020 by the author 

Little Paradise

Little Paradise

Brought up in the lap
Of multilayered colorful Hindu
Mythologies, stories,
And having
Witnessed numerous plays
Musical ballads and the early
Mesmerizing Black and White movies
With
Exquisite costumes and stunning characters
Paradise is not strange for me
I could daydream and lose myself
In a trance – there I would vividly
Imagine and see in the fluffy tropical clouds
The sensuous and out-of-world
Beauties – beauties
Like Damayanti, Urvasi, and Menaka
And -
Not only that I even came across
Extraordinarily sweet and gorgeous
Dames – maidens that would put all
The average movie actresses to shame
I’ve met them
In our village
In my high school, college,
And at the institute
At the typing classes
In the corridors
And of course none could match
The beauty of imagination
Woven in
My own sweet dreams
Like the cotton candy
Sold in my village during
The annual fair near the tank
During winters in December

But today
As I was sitting for breakfast
A simple breakfast of chai and toast
I glanced gently at our deck
With the peeling paint
There’s nothing special about
The wooden deck
Yet it offered me the pleasure
Of visiting a little paradise
Across the sliding glass door
There
Barely thirty yards from the
Backyard waterfall
This deck hosts dozen plants
With delicate flowers and vegetables
There is a mango, sacred basil
The papery-petaled Royal purple bougainvillea
Red single hibiscuses, little finger eggplants,
One-foot high tamarinds, citrus, and
Tasty amaranthus
And aha! The betel leaf creeper too
Some times we’ve cilantro and fenugreek
In rectangular pots on the side
The only thing the garden lacks -
Is a greenhouse!
A shelter for those cold months
That precede spring and suddenly
Follow the vivacious autumn
You can grow a few more tomatoes
Eggplants or okra
But still this little garden
In the shade of tall maple trees
Is almost heavenly
Mother would’ve been ecstatic
With such a little garden
Next to the kitchen
In the village she’d often
Grow fresh tall amaranthus
Gongura, beans, snake gourd
White pumpkin, and tasty aromatic
Bananas
She provided her children
With nutritious meals
Grown almost entirely in our garden
With backbreaking hoeing and tending
Decades later I realized how lucky
We’re
To have such a mother
She gifted us good eyesight
Strong bones and well-formed teeth
And most important – “dharmic upbringing”
Yea
Paradise can happen anywhere
If the courage to dream
And
Willing muscles for hard work

Exist

Copyright 2020 by the author