flowers spell beauty, maybe because they are a sign of success, (a colourful) proof of a plant having not only survived, but getting ready to spread the seeds out for the next generation to sprout, a rainy interlude in the symphony of seasons, the sum total of all the rigour happening underground expressed as a riot of colours, some bright, some earthy, flaunting the lavender, or feeling rusty…
mountains in a sense are a manifestation of yin and yang – yin being the white, vast snowscapes portraying desolation, a wrath of the elements that is not ready to permit any life into its dominion… men go to great lengths to map and traverse these lands, tottering on the edge of sanity and mortality to reach summits that hold no tangible values save a rekindling of the soul… and yang visually represented by lush green meadows, the frozen headwaters melted by time, conjuring up carpets and canopies of green, a celebration of life in all forms and sizes…
flowers give character to mountains, ravish to the ridges and resplendence to the riverbed, and hues to the contours that become our memory of a mountain… butterflies dance to their nectar and bumblebees amble along their petals… like all beauty, this is fleeting too, a season or two, informing the outdoors on the transience of life and impermanence of sorrow before the cruel seasons set in…
‘tis not surprising that flowers mimic faunal personalities, some stand tall and stout, swaying with the breeze in a careless defiance of youth, some hang on to the steep slopes in a steely resolve, defying gravity with permutations around cracks and crevasses, some stick close to the ground, preferring to invest their energies into expanding roots rather than indulging in extravagances above the ground, and some slyly occupy the gaps, encroaching every bit of precious real estate…
for a terrain that is quintessentially challenging and for a large part inhabitable, flowers area a symbol of simplicity – a single strand of life defying infinite odds – that on close scrutiny turn out to be an illustration of some of the most complex theories, from fractals to Fibonacci… an iota in the universe, yet a universe within its own…
musings on flowers, travels across Western Himalaya…
