The Language Of Flowers

By Deeksha Sindhu

The sun was high up in the sky and there was a gentle breeze that day. I was perched upon a slab of rock under the heavy Indian Mahogany tree at the far end of my school’s boundary. The wind kept rustling the leaves overhead which produced a low melodious sound. My books were spread before me. I was trying to solve an algebra sum with my notebook lying in my lap and my pen in my mouth. I chewed a lot on my pen even though it left a really foul taste in my mouth. It was a habit I had developed when I was around ten-right when I first started using a pen instead of pencils.

I had been laboring over the same problem for a good ten minutes but still couldn’t make any head or toe of it, so with a sigh I shut my notebooks deciding to copy the answer from my roommate later. I leaned back against the trunk of the mahogany tree. It was damp, as was my perch from rain water. It had rained quite a lot yesterday, as a result everything was cool and damp today. It was slightly uncomfortable but I preferred the monsoon in my hill station school much more than the monsoon at my home in the plains. Where I am from, the climate is a contradiction. It gets oppressively hot in the summers and the temperatures plummet in winters. Monsoon comes with its own headaches of humidity and mosquitoes and diseases.

However, in my British era boarding school, which is tucked away in a small hilly town in Himachal the climate is cold or gets colder. My school belongs to a different time period. The years passed but it somehow retained its obsolete primness . As had the small town.

While the rest of the country was in the claws of the fast paced lifestyle of the nineties, this small settlement at the foot of the Shivaliks had managed to evade the grip and was living blissfully unaware of the changes that had happened.

I inhaled the smell of petrichor deeply and smiled. After sitting for five more minutes I decided to go for a walk. I gathered my belongings and made my way to my dorm.

‘Watch where you are going!’ a vexed voice called out. I looked up and saw that Mr Ray was standing a few yards away with a menacing pair of pruning shears in his hand. ‘ You are walking all over the grass!’

Mr Ray was the school gardener. He lived in the school campus in a hut at the far end of the campus, right before the moss covered wall that was always damp.

Mr Ray, was a seventy something man with a head of snowy silver hair that was visible even from a great distance. Apart from help in the form of two part time gardeners that came every alternate day from the village, Mr Ray single handedly maintained the picturesque foliage of the sprawling place.

He was a stringent man with an ever present scowl, which deepened everytime someone even dared to breathe too close to his kaleidoscopic flowers. His animosity to any living being other than plants had not made him anyone’s favorite. He hated it when kids sat or played on his perfectly manicured grass and once even went as far as to write an official complaint which demanded that nobody but him be allowed on the grounds. Almost everyone chalked him down as someone who was slowly losing it after that.

But whatever you want to say he did have some kind of magic in him. The school wouldn’t be as half as aesthetically pleasing as it currently was, without him. So he was certainly boosting the economy of the school because half of the reason people enrolled here was because it looked something out of English story books.

Mr Ray could grow any and everything. The school mess only used the vegetables he grew in the 300 hundred square feet plot specifically allotted to him for this purpose. Every single vase in the school was decorated by the vibrant flowers Mr Ray produced. He had a penchant for flowers. The only time the perpetual scowl was absent, was when he was tending to his flowers.

All flowers Mr Ray planted easily grew except for one. Habenaria orchids did not yield to even Mr Ray’s expert hands. Orchids are easily the most difficult to grow plants out there but Habenaria are even more difficult. He tried to grow them every year, but the farthest he had reached were some small buds that never bloomed.

It was obvious that this inconceivable fact immensely disappointed Mr Ray.

‘What is that book you are holding?’ Mr Ray asked me, successfully breaking me from my reverie.

‘Introduction to algebra?’ I said, thoroughly confused.

‘No the other one. Show it to me.’ he said while extending his hand. The other book happened to be a book I had issued from the library about the language of flowers. I had been reading a detective novel recently which had a code language based on the meaning of flowers. I had checked the book out solely so I could understand the code.

I handed the book to Mr Ray, perplexed at his sudden affability. Mr Ray tucked his sheers under his arm and started going through the book with considerable excitement.

‘I remember reading this book when I was around eleven years old. It was the reason I got interested in gardening.’ he said, nostalgia clouding his black eyes and giving them the shine of memories. I was surprised. I had no idea the book was published so long ago.

‘Are you interested in this subject?’ he asked me. The corners of his lips were up in a small smile and his eyes conveyed an excitement that was not expressed in his face. This change in his temperament was a shock to me because until then I only regarded him from the lens of the image I had created for him in my mind. The fact that he could experience emotions like excitement, happiness and sentimentality did not make sense.

‘Recently yes.’ I managed to say after a pause of around half a minute. Mr Ray considered my answer for a few moments before replying ‘I have some more books about this, better written and more informative. Would you like to see them?’ I nodded my assent as I was at loss for words. Mr Ray began walking and I realized that he expected me to follow him some moments later. I sped up to catch up with him.

Mr Ray led me to his cottage. He left the shears in a wheelbarrow just outside his door. The door had a brass handle which was unlocked. The cottage only had one floor. There were two rooms. The one you found yourself upon entering was the bigger one and served as a sitting room, living room, kitchen, dining room all rolled in one. There was a huge mahogany cupboard in one corner. The other end had a counter and some small cabinets fixed in the wall. This was Mr Ray’s kitchen. Just in front of the counter was a small round table. Its legs were uneven and Mr Ray had tried to level them by sticking wads of folded up newspapers underneath. The table also had two chairs around it. They looked exactly like the ones in our library. There was one ratty looking arm chair in a corner and one small settee. Mr Ray’s apartment was certainly frugal but it seemed comfortable enough.

‘Take any seat you like.’ Mr Ray said to me as he made his way towards the cupboard. I drew back one of the chairs and sat down, slightly dazed. My library book was still in Mr Ray’s hand. He came back with a thick book covered in red cloth with its title printed in typewritten gold coloured font.

He kept the two books in front of me and motioned me to take a look. I opened the volume and started turning the crinkly, slightly yellow pages. There were a lot of notes in the margins and some words were underlined by a neat, precise handwriting, which I assumed to be Mr Ray’s. As I skimmed through the book, Mr Ray went to his kitchen and put on a kettle. Some time later he came back with two cups of tea and placed them on the table.

‘Different flowers have different meanings based on traditional myths, customs and medicinal uses.’ he told me. ‘You can send someone a meaningful message through a bouquet if you know the language of flowers. I am guessing you probably read about this in some mystery book of yours, didn’t you?’ he asked me. I nodded stunned. How did he know I read mystery books? ‘Yes.’ continued Mr Ray. ‘I see you numerous times every week, sitting in my garden, engrossed in some or the other book, without even sparing a glance at my flowers.’ He seemed to have heard my thoughts.

Mr Ray began by telling me the basic meanings of every flower family. Jasmines meant affability, ivy signified friendship and affection, tulips meant love and yellow roses were symbols for friendships, happiness and new beginnings. He told me the first flowers he had planted in the school were yellow roses, to signify the new point in his life.

‘Orchids usually refer to thoughtfulness and mature calm. The older I got, the fonder I grew of orchids.’ he sighed. Mr Ray had a coughing fit at this point and had to take a few sips of his tea before he continued. ‘The only variety I haven’t been able to grow are the Habenaria ones. You must have seen that bed.’

‘Yes I have.’

‘I have taken it as a challenge to grow them. They will bloom one day, just you see. Everything does, eventually.’

-

Mr Ray asked me to try and come whenever I had the time that day. And I did. Slowly my schedule changed and I went to meet Mr Ray at least three days a week.

At first I did this out of pity. From my first visit I had made out that Mr Ray was lonely. He had no friends in the school, neither in the form of teachers nor the students. Unlike most lonely people of his age, Mr Ray did not even find solace in animals as companions. He detested the school cat because she played in his beds. The only companionship he had was that of his plants.

But slowly I started looking forward to these meetings. Mr Ray was a good talker. It did not feel like a lecture, even though he was technically teaching me. I also developed an actual interest in the language of flowers. To me it was the epitome example of how humans behaved towards anything they liked. We found flowers beautiful to look at, we resonated with them so we assigned them much deeper meanings . I started to pay more attention in these sessions than in my actual classes.’

-

The weeks quickly passed and soon it was summer break and we were packing to go back home. I went to meet Mr Ray for the last time until I came back the night before school ended. He was a little subdued.

‘How long will you be gone?’ he asked.

‘Three weeks. That’s how long the school will be out.’

He nodded. ‘Try and remember what you have learned with me. But pay attention to your school work as well.’ he told me slightly severely. I smiled. Mr Ray said this to me every time we met.

‘I think the habenarias might grow this time.’ he added after a little while. I looked up in surprise and Mr Ray smiled at my disbelief. ‘Yes, the signs are good.’

As I rose to leave he quickly pushed his red book in my hand. I began to protest but Mr Ray did not even allow me to say anything. ‘I would like it if you took this without arguing. Consider it a gift. Or as I am passing down my inheritance.’ he smiled.

‘But what about you Mr Ray? Won’t you want to read it?’

‘Oh! I have it memorized already.’ Mr Ray waved my concern aside.

-

I bought Mr Ray a pair of gardening gloves, as a gift when I came back. I had missed talking to him tremendously when I was at home and was anxious to see him as soon as possible. I started walking towards his hut, brimming with excitement.

But Mr Ray’s hut was empty. I quickly began to walk around the ground expecting him to be at some corner, caring for his plants. After nearly an hour of searching, I found no sign of him anywhere. That’s when I began to feel truly concerned.

I went to the reception. After waiting for a few moments so that my eyes could adjust to the lighting, I walked over to the desk and asked in my politest voice.

‘Excuse me, do you have any idea where Mr Ray is?’

The lady looked at me with a bewildered expression before changing her face into that of sympathy.

‘You just came back, right?’ I nodded ‘I am really sorry but Mr Ray passed away this summer. Let me know if I can help you in any way.’ She said something after that too but I did not hear her. I was trying to process what she had just told me.

Mr Rat was no more. He was not here anymore. He was not in this world.

I would never be able to talk about flowers with him again. I would never see him tend to his beloved plants again. I would not be able to tell him about the lilac flowers that I had planted back home, which meant family. I would never be able to give him the gardening gloves.

I sat on my rock for the large part of the evening, the gloves lying forgotten in my lap.

The wind started flowing again. I looked up taking in the garden now that Mr Ray was gone. The hedges needed pruning, the bed of the roses was drying up. But then I saw something that caused me to stop in my tracks.

The Habenaria bed was in full bloom. The entire bed was yellow and green and the petals were swaying slightly in the wind. Mr Ray’s most loved flowers were finally in bloom, but he was not here to see them.

By Deeksha Sindhu