The Hibiscus and the Butterfly

The neighbours were shifting and they could not take the array of plants they had been growing in their balcony. So they graciously gifted me a plant with a lone hibiscus bud on one of its slender branches. I accepted the plant with infinite gratitude. Then began my engagement with the plant every morning, its tender young leaves looking up to me for their daily sustenance of water apart from the air and sunshine they got gratis. I nurtured it with care, gently turned over the soil, added a little mulch at its roots and spoke to it as I would to a child and soon the young plant began to flourish with fresh leaves, and one day the flower blossomed in all its glory.

A bright vermillion red with a pale red stamen and a green calyx, it seemed to bear all the beauty and colour of nature as it swayed gently on its delicate stalk. I almost caught my breath as I saw it for the first time resplendent in its redness, with the faint rays of the sun falling on its petals, oh so softly. The unassuming bud turned glorious flower! I saw in its redness the redness of the horizon, I saw in its slender branches the green of a pristine world, I saw in its sway the lissome grace of a practiced dancer. The gentle breeze played music to its dance. The flower was a canticle to the Sun. How much can a single flower encapsulate, how much of the creator’s powers does it reflect.

I know the flower would remain on the plant only for a day or two and would fade away making place for others to be. Isn’t that what happens with life all around us? When all life is finite against the backdrop of eternity, the present means everything. In the midst of my musings I saw a beautiful yellow butterfly sitting on the flower, both sharing a perfect moment. In the little time they are granted, in the transience of the moment and the brevity of their encounter, the flower and the butterfly make one another happy with no hopes or regrets, no yesterdays or tomorrows. In their mortality lies their immortality, in their moment, eternity.