CHERRY PINK

Photo credit: Arridhapa Shulai
Memory tag: Cherry blossom time in Shillong, Meghalaya.

Did you know that as the monsoon clouds rolled back, a fairy flew over Shillong? She was on her way to party and O! she dropped her tiny powder box! Did the prince of elves find her any less beautiful and dance with another? We do not know. But we awoke to find our hills dotted with pink! This was as November began.

Wherever you turn amidst villages and villas; offices and cafes; shopping areas and schools; hills and vales there are the cherry trees in full bloom! Mesmerizing, soft, cherry pink blossoms. Shut within automobiles, talking endlessly into mobiles, clicking heel and tapping toes, stop!! for just a few minutes and drink deeply of these ephemeral , soft, moments. Look up, look up, on those branches before they drop their blossoms at your feet.

Winter with its   perfectly frosted champagne mornings, brings golden blue days to bask in before the evening draws her curtain in star spangled banners across the night sky. Its  this beauty the cherry blossoms seem out to capture. So they come out in clouds to clothe branches that seemed lifeless and stark in October. It starts as a small whisper. One, two three, four, forty, hundred, four hundred, four thousand and there seems to be no branches only flowers! Tight pink buds break out into before you into singing.  A chorus that is joined by the bees humming, and matching note with note.

The bees bring stories, songs, news of cherry blossom time past and present. They carry away gossip, news, the latest numbers, a golden harvest of pollen to their next destination drunk with cherry wine. Its cherry wine fest for them! The blossoms overwhelmed by the secrets that only the pollen can reveal, drop their veils of pink petals and grow into fruit. The ground beneath our feet is already being carpeted with soft blossoms. It will soon be raining cherry blossoms! Tread softly for we are treading on their dreams! 

Then it will be back to business as usual. The green leafy sun catchers are already busy on many trees, clothing them once more in anonymous green till its cherry blossom time again! Its already the last week of November now.