December Flowers!

Our half-yearly vacation was always looked forward to very eagerly by all of us. For one thing the weather was very pleasant, the winter temperature never going below 20 degrees celsius in our state, in the plains. In the summer vacation we would be scolded for playing outside too much in the sun but the winter vacations were just right for the kids and we could play all through the day. Only when dusk fell we would be called home lest we caught any chill from the 'cold' weather.

My grandfather's place in the village must have registered lower temperatures as it was the only time I ever saw the coconut oil in the house freezing solid. It was always a pleasure to look forward to the scooping of the oil with our fingers (no spoon!) and letting it melt in the warmth of our palms and applying it on our hair. We used to apply oil daily on our hair and plaster it into pigtails or close-cut crop, depending on whether we grandchildren were girls or boys. In fact we came to see shampooed hair only in our teens when we moved into bigger towns! If anybody's head sported a single hair out of place from the slicked-back oily look, we were admonished by the elders why we were going around with such a beggarly appearance! Apparently only the poorest of the poor couldn't afford oil for their hair!

The winter saw the arrival of 'December flowers' in the markets. It was so called because they were aplenty in the month of December though they started flowering in November and would still be available till the end of February. All the girls in Tamilnadu used to wear flowers in their hair everyday after tying their hair into plaits, double or single.This part of our culture is still alive in the villages though the city girls have dropped this habit. The December flowers were very much sought after by us as they came in many colours and we could choose the exactly matching shade for our dresses! The flowers didn't have any fragrances and now I know why older women didn't use them so much to adorn their hair but children were crazy after the flowers. The deep blue ones and the plain white ones which were matching our uniform dresses were favoured for our school days. We used to wear long strings of these flowers.

When we went to the small town where my other grandparents lived, the December flowers were sold at a house which had a back garden full of these flowers in various colours. They were not professional flower vendors but they used to sell these seasonal flowers to make a bit of money rather than letting them fall to the ground at the end of the day, being of no use to anybody.

The only difficulty was that these flowers would have sold out by 7 am. We should reserve which colours we wanted the previous day itself. The light pink colour was much in demand and I remember one occasion when I had set my heart for this colour but the lady of the house said that it was already sold out! Seeing my diappointment she said that the order was for 300 flowers (Yes, they would count them out) but if the shrubs happened to produce more, I could have them.

The next morning, the minute I was awake, I remembered the lady's promise and jumped up from the bed. The day was just dawning. Straightaway I ran to their house which was just at the corner in the next street at the end of our street. Seeing me running, two of my cousins who were also staying at my grandparents' followed me, without even knowing what was up! Breathless from running, we knocked at their door and the sleepy-eyed inmates opened their door to see three disheveled children waiting to buy the flowers which had not even started opening their petals yet! Their son who would usually pluck the flowers muttered something and went back to sleep! In the end, myself and my cousins plucked the flowers ourselves, helped the lady to count them out and managed to buy the extra flowers for ourselves.

We returned home triumphantly and were soundly scolded by our mother for having presented ourselves like beggars at a stranger's house, without even combing our hair or washing our faces. So what, we had the pleasure of wearing our favourite coloured flowers that day! Nothing I bought later on when I grew up into adulthood had ever matched the joy I felt when I got those flowers!