The Flower Pickers

I used to make fun of my boss and old teacher who would tell me how he woke at 4.00 am and commenced his day with some deep study. Young as i was, i mocked his insomnia and even suggested that he probably begins to plot against his many minions in those wee hours to gain a ‘Competitive Advantage’. Nothing brought me as much amusement as the anecdote that this gentleman who graduated from Harvard once received a call at about 2.00 am claiming that the caller was Prof Michael Porter from HBS wanting to discuss Industry Structure. Obviously the prankster was some student much inebriated and vexed by his assignments or studies at the cheap bar called Raj Palace just outside the college.  Given that sometimes i was found there too, i was viewed with as much suspicion. As i myself age and take refuge in the same strange and ineffable silence that pervades the early morning hours between 3.00 and 4.30 am, I feel guilty at my childish jokes of youth gone by. But the sounds of the summer silence are soon broken by cuckoo calls to mate before the crows unravel their devious designs to mix their eggs with those of crows. I might even chuckle; no wonder cuckoos lend their name to adultery and are not the only ones horny so early in the day. As i sit in the silence i fathom the stirrings and the sounds, which by 5.oo am is a grating ringtone of the gardener trying to wake up and start his day or that of some rickshaw driver asleep with a hangover after drinking a quarter of whiskey whose evidence is just beside his vehicle. Soon the ragpickers would arrive with large Santa Claus plastic sacks, some Tamil speaking women who move furtively scouring the edges of the road picking up bottles and sometimes booty that conferred oblivion to some after a tiring day or quench the thirst of many a scorched soul through the day in plastic bottles. They speak in hushed voices though their harsh tongue betrays them sooner than their feet. Their feet don’t shuffle but move fast and with agility that only calculation and illegality can confer.

Soon in half an hour another set of feet shuffle carelessly and amidst long pauses beside hedges and gardens straining to pluck the morning blooms. These are the flower pickers. I have always been troubled by their presence and have been indulgent and exasperated by them in equal measure. Their custom is as old as tradition itself when small habitations were edged by jungle and mystery and conferred exotic blossoms to many a ritual. In the interests of full disclosure my mother is herself a flower picker though not half as ingenious or persistent and judging by the handful, a very poor one. This species of human beings is endemic to India and abound as much in villages as urban spaces (to most of whom the city is just one larger village). They can be found at dawn holding plastic bags hidden in their pockets or sari waists pulled up when they seize an unwitting blossom, just shy of opening and wondering at the dawn. They are deft and ruthless which is what troubles me. They care not the delicacy of the blossom or bud or its deep colour or its faint fragrance.  To them they are simply a commodity vehicle for bribery (okay that’s a bit extreme) to carry their much importuning to their deity. Legend holds that at Vulture Peak near Rajgir (Rajagaha) the Buddha held up a single blossom and looked searchingly at the assembly of monks and of the surprised monks only Mahakashyapa smiled. The Buddha conferred his robes to Mahakashyapa and institutionalised the first transmission of “Dharma” to the Buddhist authority or assembly. That solitary blossom still shines in our imagination. To flower pickers a single blossom is a sign of enormous poverty and unless their coloured bags are filled to bursting they would not stop their locust like harvests. They gather not in single spies but in battalions of harvest denuding all innocent branches that were adventurous enough to peep outside the garden and gift their beauty on passersby.

Most of these flower pickers are however the wizened or elderly or those from a deep hinterland, impervious to age but saddled by custom. Some of them are armed with walking sticks with a crook as handle to pull distant branches to themselves as the rest pity their cane as insignia of infirmity. I should imagine that this pastime rises in proportion to their distance from retirement as they find new hobbies like flower collection to bedeck their tiny shrines. I remember an anecdote by an elderly lady who hails from a different species (left liberal i imagine) asking a bewildered woman why she was invading her garden. When told that it was for her morning ritual puja (as though it was sufficient legitimacy sanctioned by the Good Lord) the liberal woman said “bring your gods and place them under my shrub they shall have all the flowers for many a season”.   I am sure the woman fled at the blasphemy quite bewildered at the prospect of unseating her wish granters. I imagine that in each state of India the target of their attacks are different kinds of flowers. Living mostly at Mumbai i found that these elderly souls come overwhelmingly from a Maharashtrian background though all communities are equally infected by the ailment. Maharashtrian flower pickers tend to be men above 65 years old targeting Hibiscus flowers the redder the better to offer to their elephant faced God. So competitive they are in picking that they denude the entire Hibiscus shrub to the extent that even the buds that would open the next morning are plucked and stored in water. It is funny to see two elderly people beginning at different ends of the bush to outpluck the other. With Hibiscus now available in all shades they seem to relish the multicoloured pickings. Once i witnessed a new public garden filled with several dozens of hibiscus blooms completely picked to desolation. So upset was i that i joined them saying that their gods would enjoy this wanton destruction. They fled muttering i must be a mussalman disrespectful of their gods. If Hibiscus is scarce, they then fall upon any flowering shrub such as Frangipani or Plumeria, Vinca, Ixora, Tagar, Spider lily, Jasmine, Nagchampa (which withers within an hour of plucking), pink or white oleander or even Shevanti blossoms etc. especially those that are not shy enough to blossom beyond garden hedges. Sometimes these are accompanied by mango leaves, tulsi leaves, durva grass and other such offerings. If you add datura fruit and flower you must be pretty hardcore. Further they assume that flowers from the neighbour’s garden are more suitable for worship than those of my own. They smell sweeter and are prettier just like the proverbial neighbour’s mangoes, simply worth stealing. These shuffled feet at dawn while my neighbour sleeps is to simply avoid such questioning. Once the sun is up many of them migrate to public gardens where the sleepy watchman does not fret at their greedy habits.

It is of some consolation that many flowers are unfit for the gods, the lovely yellow summer carpets of son mohor and the deep red gul mohor, or the brilliant bunches of laburnum or even late winter jacaranda blossoms or those of bougainvillea or rain tree or almond sprays or even Ipomea and legume blossoms and many more. I wish the list was much expanded so that this tribe is given an alternative vocation. I wonder if the gods do believe that more flowers equate to more wishes or deeper grace as these votaries seem to think.  I would plead on behalf of all the reproductive energies of the plants that this inequity be mitigated. I remember shocking someone by telling them that they were crushing the testes and ovaries of these plants for their own desire (now that was pretty hardcore). In many cases these are driven by frugality rather than spend a few rupees on flowers for worship. That brings me to the question i ponder whether horticulture is as violent as animal husbandry on an industrial scale. Can the same ethical sensitivities of equating solitary animals such as pets and those of cattle at the slaughterhouse draw parallels to flowers from an individual garden and trees and acres of tulips and roses or in greenhouses for the market. That sounds like a bit bizarre though logical. Plants are after all a primary food source to the herbivores lest we wish that everyone feed on plankton and krill.

As a child I remember Swami Chinmayananda tell us that offering flowers to the Lord is merely a symbolic gesture of offering a beautiful mind. He surmised that our innate tendencies buried in the subconscious called “fragrances” or ‘vasanas’ are what we offer unto His feet. If only it were so easy as to simply do a collection each morning; for to offer our flowers is to surrender our will unto Him. Who then pray is the plucker and who the plucked? Don’t we sing “tera tujh ko arpan kya lage mera”? Sri Ramana Maharshi used to discourage his devotees from plucking flowers. In one instance an elderly lady wanted to pluck a thousand trifoliate bilwa leaves and do a thousand name offering to Lord Shiva.  The Maharshi suggested why she did not consider pinching herself a thousand times saying that as sentient life it amounts to a kind of violence. We offer not flowers but our minds and egos or will in accord that “thy will be done”.  I have wondered at the story of the screw pine flower (Kevda) never offered to Shiva as she lied at the behest of Brahma that he discovered her at the top of an endless linga or shaft of light. Maybe more flowers should become liars to save their species becoming victims of religiosity; i.e. I keep my bets of evolving new myths that prohibit more Indian flower species to be given as an offering. At my village the Nagchampa tree in the Vishnu shrine is bountiful but is not offered to Vishnu. The devotees of Shiva invade the garden and carry them off to the shrine of Shiva the other side of the road. The priests of Vishnu seem relieved and don't wish to be seen with divided loyalties. As for the flower pickers they tie the ‘used’ flowers as ‘nirmalya’ in a plastic bag and set them afloat on the sea, to haunt the beaches after the gods register their dispersal; reminding us all ‘dust to dust ashes to ashes’ the cycle of life.

Just as we bedeck our necks, wrists, ear lobes, and ankles, Nature bedecks herself on the trees and shrubs and that is where they are the most beautiful, visited by the butterfly and moth, bird and bee. I don’t dislike the flower pickers...i like the flowers more. Yet the next morning as i take my mother for her early morning walk i can feel her nudge me to pick a flower just beyond her reach. She simply puts them in a dish and peers at them from time to time, admiring them and sparing the gods of the trouble.