Cherry blossoms

  “I really do not understand what you mean.”

A wild thing hammered in Teesta’s chest as she tiredly said,” Please give me some time to sort things out,” and turned away from Shayon’s face. It was painful to look at him right now. The night breathed, scattering the cherry blossom petals against a sky bright with the ascending full moon. The stinging coolness made her aware of the rivulets down her cheeks for the first time. Aaah…she thought, looking up, the cherry tree, so beautiful…as always. Unaware of hereself, she smiled at the thought of cherry blossoms viewed for centuries as a symbol of ephemerality by Japanse waka and haiku poets…how ironic.

Teesta’s hobby of pressing flowers began when she was eight. Everyday, their two by three feet balcony garden saw, among others, the bloom of small blue flowers as delicate as a mayfly’s wing. So fragile was it that it immediately wrinkled and tore when one tried to pluck it off. The flowers unfurled with the unfurling of the pale light in the east and shriveled up when the last light faded in the west. ”They last for such a little time!” she complained.

 “Try pressing them,” her mother advised.

 Between the pages of a thick sketchbook the dew-like petals turned papery, its sky colour turned a transparent white and brown spots marked its injuries.

  A little way off the main road stood a cherry tree, solitary among the pensive greenness of pines and cedars, with its cheery blush at the arrival of spring. On its lowest branch, one quiet afternoon, Teesta was perched, watching the shops along the main road and the cluster of houses further off through her mini-binoculars.

 “Hey. Can I see that?”

  She looked down to find a boy about her age, lean of built and big of eyes.

  “Ok. Sure.”

  That day, Teesta took back a cherry blossom to press in her sketchbook – unbeknownst to her, the first of a series of flowers stringing up a story.

  Another spring, and Teesta was leaning against the cherry tree, sketchbook in hand, each hardly-audible swish of her pencil bringing Shayon’s profile to life. He was busy on his rubik's cube – rubik's cube was all the rage at school. Swish-swish-swish, click-click-click. Occasionally the cherry tree whispered, showering petals on her sketchbook which she would have to brush away at intervals, though years later there still remained a handful of them pressed along the binding.

  The cherry trees whispered again. Under it, Teesta compared an old sketch with the personage now before her. The smoothness of the cheeks and chin was replaced by a rough, bluish growth; the small compactness expanded in height and width. It was no use trying to get him to be still for a second portrait. He was busy practising his dribbling a few paces off among the mossy trunks. Instead she slipped a flower between the pages for remembrance.

  Spring arrived with two days of incessant, misty rain. Teesta cried under the cherry tree- cried because she was not beautiful, smart and engaging – cried with all the agony and self-pity only a sixteen-year-old can feel. That year she took no flowers to press.

  The next year found Shayon and Teesta together under the cherry tree, quiet and at peace. “Will you pluck me that one, please?” Shayon was aware of Teesta’s eyes following his hand which could now effortlessly reach for that high branch.

  The shadow of the blossoms caressed the empty spot next to Teesta. It had been eight long years since she last saw Shayon, in a taxi, meandering down the serpentine mountain road and out of sight, off to medical college, to the metropolis in the plains. All the flowers which she had carefully preserved over the years were faded and turned papery – the ghosts of bygone days. The new blossoms overhead laughed with life. What will the new Shayon be like?

  The new Shayon met her very soon after, the following year. And what were Ms. Teesta’s, librarian at the Municipal Library, impressions of Dr. Shayon, M.B.B.S, M.D? Well, he was as annoying as ever…if not more. Take the way he insisted on her wrapping herself up to an inch of her life(“People catch a cold easily during this change of seasons.”) while himself bracing the October wind jacket-less, or the way he frowned when she poured herself a second glass of coke and then proceeded to smoke three cigarettes in a row…And then, of course, there were other changes.

  Teesta knew what was coming ever since came back home to announce his decision to set up practice here in these remote mountains. No, actually, she had known it longer than that. It was thrilling, and yet, she was troubled by the anxiety clinging at her skirt.

  In the moonlight, Teesta bent down to pick up a flower fallen among the dead grass. What if she took this magic moment and preserved it forever between the pages of a ‘Yes’? Would this thing which had been holding them together for so long – this thing as delicate and precious as a spring flower – survive the pressure of daily making breakfast, paying the bills, returning home too tired to talk and, perhaps, occasional quarrels. No, no, of course it won’t…it never does…she had seen it all too many times. It would wither; it would die; and leave only a papery exhaustion –bitterness even, who knows!

  Overhead, the cherry tree whispered as the wind asked its hand for a dance. She had changed. Shayon had changed. The world around her had changed. Only the cherry tree remained the same. Each year the last of its blossoms fell. Each year it came back to life anew. Nothing broke its eternal cycle. What if she did not try to preserve it, lengthen its life artificially through codified puppetry, trap the delicate blossom between obligations? What if she let it change as she and Shayon changed, growing stronger as the years went by, never becoming burdensome, ordinary or old but dying each moment only to transform into something yet more beautiful, always as free and pure as it was when it first budded, unhindered, undying as the cherry blossoms?

  “Teesta?”

  She was recalled to herself. A deep inhale, exhale and she turned to face him. Her cold hands took his cold hand – his hand so soft and gentle. “Shayon,” she willed herself to look up into his eyes despite the gathering film of mist, ”I – I don’t know if I can explain this to you very well, but would you – could you understand if I said it was a ‘No’ to really say a ‘Yes’?”