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It’s not your absence that kills me. Rather, ..it’s the hope that you’ll be coming some day!

The Violet Flowers

It was one of the most unique incidents in my life! One of the very few that never had any explanation. I am seventy now, and I have grandchildren. They ask for bedtime stories, and I often get to narrate this tale to them. And just as I, they never seem to grow tired of it. I don’t know what makes it so new every time it’s told! But the fact that we all like it is a reason enough for me to go on telling it over and over. Maybe its essence is what we all like about it – the fact that it goes unexplained every time it’s told afresh! It’s like that wafting sweet scent that you want to get rid of, just because you have grown tired of your inability of trying and locating its source, but… which, instead, never leaves you – quite to your liking and disgust! 

The incident occurred when I was about forty. I was living at a place that was more like a village, having a nice forest around it with varieties of flowers and birds. I was working there as a deputy to the Chief Magistrate of the state for the development of that land. We were essentially building new roads that would connect the location to bigger cities, with the hope that it would be changing to a town for the better. I was to stay there for six months and supervise the construction. And I was living at a place whose neighborhood had a nice man called Shaul. He was basically one of the richer guys of the area with a large bungalow and a beautiful garden that was almost like a decorated piece of poetry that people from miles away came to visit often. He invited me from time to time to have dinner or lunch. He lived with his wife and had no children. I wondered whether being thus alone was one of the prime reasons why they never felt any holding backs in terms of spending money. They spent with grace and always helped other people. Shaul was very energetic. He was gay and talkative and had a heavy figure. He was unmercifully possessive of his garden where he grew rare flowers with utmost care. At times he was a bit short-tempered, but again, he was one of those men who quickly forgot any bad lines that he had spoken or that was spoken to him. He held no grudges! And he always had this piece of expensive cigar hanging from his lower lip. His wife was a bit on the shyer side – talking less and spending more time in kitchen, cooking delicious dishes for the entire neighborhood. They were unanimously loved and respected throughout the place.  

It all started with a visitor, a man – with shabby, torn clothes and dirty wisps of hair who had come from a distant place, outside the realms of that village, which he never talked about much. He had come to meet me. I got to know that he was with his eight-year old son who was deeply ill. And he needed this written recommendation from me to get the boy admitted to a well known hospital that was situated some five miles from there. He said he had gone to the hospital but was not attended much because he didn’t have enough money and that he was told if he could get a recommendation signed by a Government official, his son could be admitted there. Then he had come to know of me staying here and have walked all the way from the hospital, carrying his son on his shoulders. I inspected the boy and he indeed was very weak. He was otherwise natural, just as other boys of his age, laughing and jumping when he was happy and crying and complaining to his daddy when he was sad. But his unique feature was, as I got to notice, that he fell frequently short on energy. I presumed he was suffering from leukemia. I decided to forward a letter to the hospital authorities, and for that night, I asked Shaul if he could let the visitors stay at his place. He agreed. They were served dinner and given a room. And they were supposed to leave for the hospital, next morning, in Shaul’s car. It was the only personalised vehicle in the village apart from my own bicycle that I rode during supervising the different construction sites. 

 

I woke up the next morning to find quite a number of people gathering in front of my neighbor’s garden, listening to him shout rough lines. I understood, due to some reason, he was in one of his bad-tempered moods. I got to know then, that there was a new flower species that Shaul had bought last month from a fair, which he was trying to develop with extreme care, that the small boy had somehow destroyed. There were a lot of people. I bustled my way in and saw the poor man standing on the streets, facing Shaul, all silent. The kid was crying.  I saw ten to twelve red flowers being spread all over the ground – trampled by the dozen of people who had gathered round there. I learned that the boy had woken up early in the morning, and on the pretext of seeing the garden, had tried to pick flowers and leaves from those plants. Shaul told me that he had slapped the boy hard twice. And hearing that noise his father had woken up and had come rushing in. “You see!” Shaul told me, “Have a look at this! He has completely destroyed the plants and I will never get this species again! That’s why I don’t allow these unknown rags in my house.” The man was silent all the while. He was immensely tensed, mainly because, I presumed, he was a poor man who knew he could never buy Shaul back his costly plants! He stood there, hugging the little boy, stroking his hair. I said, “You shouldn’t have hit him Shaul. He is already weak!” “Hit him? Huh!” Shaul said, “I haven’t yet touched him. I just gave him a tight slap!” People of the village were watching us. I took Shaul into my room for a while and managed to cool him down. He went in his house after that, and slammed the door shut.

I went to the man after the crowd had dispersed. The boy had fever. His forehead was burning. I handed over the letter of recommendation to the man and asked him to leave for the hospital immediately. But he surprised me. He put the kid on his shoulders and said that he won’t take Shaul’s car. He decided to walk all those five miles, and my many requests fell to deaf ears. Shaul watched it all silently. And at the end, he had no other option but to return quietly to his room again and slam shut the door for the second time. The man disappeared. And for a month, he never appeared again. I was told that he had reached the hospital safely and that he was never again seen in the village, but I never got to know how his son’s health faired. And owing to my busy schedule and a sudden increment of the work-rate in the next few weeks, I totally forgot the incident until the man returned, one night, to my house again. 

 

He appeared more lean than ever – his clothes more dirty! And he was more silent this time. But in that darkness of the night, I saw his eyes burning like those of a tiger. I asked him to sit down and have a glass of water. But he didn’t. He kept standing awkwardly with such obstinate demeanor that even I couldn’t sit down properly! He spoke very slowly, choosing each word with extreme care. I got to learn that his son has died. The doctors couldn’t do anything. Blood transfusion was carried out twice! But still that had failed to save him. The man gave me something, small, wrapped in a muddy piece of cloth! I asked, “What is it?” The thing was sealed with a piece of transparent polythene that would have taken sufficient time to open! “My son destroyed his plant!” the man spoke in that dark, “So I have got a plant for him. Give him this. This bears violet flowers and they are very beautiful!” I was quite stunned. The gentleness of the poor man left me spellbound for a while. But, then, I thought about it and said, “Shaul has forgotten the incident! And he has got so many types of flowers in his garden, you know. We are all very sorry about your son, but you can take this back.” I smiled. I tried my best to get out of that situation! And then he said, “Maybe he has forgotten, but I haven’t. And I will never. Give him this. This is picked from a corner of the forest surrounding your own village!” Leaving me stranded in that dark, he went away that night. The man never came back again.

I handed over the plant to Shaul the next morning. He liked it. And as he was a simple, uncomplicated man, he never related it to what had happened before. He planted the thing at a corner of his garden and exclaimed, “Oh this looks beautiful, really! I never knew I could get such nice species from our forest itself!” The plant started to grow, and we forgot all about the poor man and his son. Things went back to were they were at the start.

 

As the violet flowers started to bloom, I noticed their most unique characteristic – that they had a strong, sweet aroma belonging to their very own, apart from being really nice looking. The scent went far away without reducing much in intensity and that started to draw more visitors from outside to Shaul’s garden. Shaul was more than happy. And he ordered his men to bring more such plants from the forest. But the men returned after regular failed attempts. Shaul cursed them and went there himself to look for it, but he didn’t find it too. And that finally made him heart-broken, as he couldn’t plant another plant like that. But then, suddenly, one day he was shouting all full of joy. I rushed out of my room and went to his garden to find that he was bending over a small plant that had grown beside the one bearing violet flowers. They resembled each other in every sense. “See! I have at last got another one!” Shaul laughed out in delight. I smiled. I was happy for him. “Maybe it reproduces by its own!” I said. That plant grew within a fortnight to bear similar flowers too that had the same strong and sweet smell belonging uniquely to the species! The aroma of Shaul’s garden increased two times. 

The story ends here. Almost. Leaving out its last part, it resembles any other bedtime story that grandfathers narrate to their grandchildren – composed of simple events, uncomplicated emotions of men and women that don’t make childrens’ minds meander too much, rather give them a basic understanding of how this world runs with its people on it. Life at seventy, it’s quite a thing! You are assumed to have seen quite a lot in life and learned quite a lot too. And the fact that you are considered one of the experienced and knowledgeable often tends to make you feel a bit embarrassed when you can’t explain simple things about this world to the young ones!

The story ends like this. Those flowers never stopped growing. One plant became two. Two – four. And the chain went on. The violet of Shaul’s garden increased to magnanimous extent. So did the scent that, instead, started to become pungent and poisonous with time! In no time, every other species made way silently for this majestic enigma of Nature and there came a time, when, in Shaul’s garden, nothing could be traced except those violet flowers. Shaul tried every option. He dug up the roots, sterilized the ground, spread poisonous chemicals – but to no avail. The germ of the violet flowers had reached such depths of earth that they resurfaced each time they were uprooted. People started leaving the neighborhood. The aroma was killing them. Shaul asked me to stay back. But the way things were progressing I sensed Shaul himself should be vacating the house pretty soon! Shaul began to lose it slowly. He was starting to get mad. The garden that he had made with so difficulty was vanishing away slowly in front of his eyes, and he could do nothing about it. His wife started making frequent appeals to him for changing the house or shifting to another village. The flowers had started to invade the walls of his house too. They were gradually climbing up with unflinching tenacity and an unfaltering precision which clearly indicated that the place should be reduced to rubble in no more than a year! But the most striking feature about the flowers was, as if controlled by a third hand of destiny, the curse never touched any of Shaul’s neighborhood. The scent was only there, just. Else, the conquest was limited to the boundaries of Shaul’s land only. No flowers grew even a meter away outside Shaul’s garden. Neither did any of the other species die there. 

Four months had gone by since the first plant was planted. And my construction-related works were over. Further, labourers working with me, at a distance of two miles from the affected site, heard rumours and started to flee. I returned to my homeland finally, which was almost a hundred miles away from that village. Safe. And worried for Shaul.

I never came to know what happened to him. He couldn’t be contacted through any mean. I tried several routes, but none of them brought me his news. Whether he lived long enough, or if he did, then, whether he remained sane – what happenned to that house, ..Shaul’s garden; ..those violet flowers – I never knew! I lived. And bore this unique story in my heart, just. A story that never had an explanation – perhaps, not even to the potent imagination of my grandchildren! Many explanations we did try to provide, and many we still do try; but the biggest mystery in this world is that connected to: Human Emotions and how they affect and get affected by Nature. Stories remain there to nourish our imagination or to question our psyche. But the real incidents occurring in this world that serve as their basis remain, sometimes, more intangible! Perhaps this is what which makes our world run – what happens and how we see it happening. Sometimes, the difference between the two is sufficient to make up a story!