For Kannada Click Here
The other day, there was a Bhoota Kola at my husband’s grandfather’s ancestral home—my mother-in-law’s parental home. We had gone there.
As I walked around the estate, looking at the gardens and paddy fields, another bogie came rumbling down the tracks of memory…
dhadak… dhadak…
Every vacation, Amma and I would spend a few days there. Those were such happy times. We would wander around places like Horanadu, Ambateertha and Rudrapada. We would also stay for a day or two at my mother-in-law’s maternal home. (My mother-in-law’s mother and my mother were related through the extended family connection. Because of that bond, my mother and my mother-in-law had become very close friends.)
I don’t remember exactly… perhaps I was in sixth or seventh standard.
One day, all of us went behind the house to play on the little hill where the cashew trees grew.
On the way, I noticed a large shrub covered with white flowers. The fragrance was wonderful.
I already knew many kinds of jasmine—dundu mallige, jaaji, Mangaluru mallige, Shankarapura mallige, Bhatkal mallige, Mysuru mallige, sooji mallige, even wild jasmine. But I had never seen this one before. I didn’t know its name either.
“It must be some ghatta mallige,” I thought.
But then another thought came to me.
There were so many flowers on the plant. Why had nobody plucked them?
It actually made me feel a little sad.
At home, flowers like abbalige (kanakambara), jasmine, hibiscus, ratnagandhi and chrysanthemum would be plucked every morning, strung into garlands and offered to God. If there were this many jasmine flowers in our village, people would either gather the buds for worship or sell them.
Perhaps no one had noticed these flowers because the shrub stood deep inside the estate.
“If I pluck all these flowers and make a beautiful garland, everyone will be so happy. They’ll praise me for being so thoughtful.”
More than anyone else, Amma would be delighted.
Just thinking about it made my heart bloom like a flower.
The first thing I did was pull some banana fibre from a nearby banana plant. Then I picked a kesu leaf.
I came back to the flowering shrub and began my work.
Pluck a few flowers…
Place them on the kesu leaf…
Tie them together…
Then pluck a few more…
Tie them again…
Slowly, patiently, I kept going.
By the time I finished, the garland was longer than a cubit. Looking at it, I felt so proud.
There were still plenty of flowers left on the shrub.
Meanwhile, the others who had gone up the hill noticed I wasn’t with them. Thinking I had lost my way and wandered off somewhere, they stopped playing and hurried back looking for me.
The moment they saw me happily plucking flowers, they all shouted together—in one voice filled with panic and fear.
“Hey! Why are you plucking the coffee flowers? If Ajja, Mama, Chikkappa or Doddappa see this, they won’t just scold you… they’ll scold all of us!”
Each one scolded me in their own way.
“I didn’t know… I’ll tell them myself. I’ll tell them I didn’t know these were coffee flowers. Why would they scold you?” I said.
“I’ve made such a beautiful garland… At least let’s take this home and offer it to God.”
Before I could finish, they took it from me and threw it away somewhere no one would find it.
“You can’t take that home… and now you want to offer it to God!” they laughed.
As if that wasn’t enough, they warned me not to tell anyone at home about what had happened.
Then they explained to me about coffee plants and coffee blossoms.
They teased me, saying I had ruined so many future coffee beans… making me feel like a complete fool.
Even today…
Whenever I see coffee blossoms, this bogie quietly rolls along the tracks of my memory…
…leaving behind the fragrance of those flowers.
By Veena Shanbhogue
Translation and Preservation by Sumanth Shanbhogue for Shanbhogue Publications
Shanbhogue Publications 
Leave a comment