Have you ever felt bugged by the world’s tighter corners where you are hemmed in by bullies, burdensome bores, rattlesnakes of rubbish and ruthless power, and with no energy to run away from them? I was imprisoned in this cell of crackpots and crushers of calm last month when I ran away to Lal Bagh and was jailed by quite another variety of bugs! And my new prison was awesome! It was the cockscomb garden getting ready for the flower show on January 26.

 There were around 50 cockscombs quietly getting ready to slaughter the roses with their very own odd, inimitable, beauty. While every rose looks like a rose, a cockscomb delights in dressing up as a basket ball, a necklace, a handkerchief, a man’s hat or a woman’s purse, a strawberry cake, a lemon biscuit, a  red jilebi, and a 100 different things. And on that sunny day, every pretty bug had decided to bless this fat floral enchantress with its own colours. So there was an army of purple, blue, red, yellow and orange bugs adding to the velvet carpet that only seems to grace this mysterious garden stunner. Every visitor passing by had to use the word ‘velvet’ for it.

 As I deliriously wandered around the rainbow and velvet cell visited by a nosy squirrel who gladly accepted some peanuts, I found a cockscomb which looked exactly like a  pineapple, lemon, and butterscotch ice-cream just waiting to be gobbled up! And as if to prove this, there was the bug on top of it, tasting its creamy rainbow velvet swirls!
And this bug’s ice cream parlour revealed the tapestry of tenderness that the universe secretively hides in garden spaces especially in rat encrusted times. This magic that murders mischief and malice with its umpteen colours is awesome.  throwing out all the racket and the racketeering and taking in the cool and calming sweetness of nature.