return on investment

There was a bumper crop of hibiscus yesterday. I picked more than a dozen flowers. All red and large. I piled them up on the deities in our tiny shrine but there is a limit to it. Two more flowers and our shrine would have looked more like a wholesale hibiscus market. More over, I feel the gods were also fed up with those flowers. More hibiscus and I would be cursed instead of being blessed.
I was left with half a dozen flowers. Did not know what to do with them. I suggested that my wife could wear them in her hair (she IS fond of flowers) and received a contemptuous look laced with verbal remarks about my taste and feelings followed by a list of location-dates-day-and time when I had made equally idiotic suggestions.

We are only three in our house. Asked my son who was getting ready to go to college, if he would like to carry the flowers to college. I thought some of his friends who wear ear- rings, chains and bangles and bracelets may like to have a flower in the hair or may be he might impress his girlfriends by offering them one. I received another look which I could not recognize, but it was followed by a sportive offer to take me along with him and have my head examined at the pscychiatry department even though it meant a detour via medical college to reach dental college. I guess there was nothing flattering in the look he had given me.

I felt dejected that my offers with genuine affection were misread and walked to the balcony. Saw my neighbour’s wife and daughter coming out of the house. Was tempted to offer the flowers but something in me, told me that the result would be a deepening of dejection. .

Just stood there looking here and there when I noticed this old lady who stays closeby. I had often seen her collect flowers from a roadside plant. That day she was trying to reach the hibiscus flowers grown in my neighbour’s compound. The flowers were at a height and she was making futile attempts to reach them. I ran down with my hibiscus and offered them to her. She accepted them gratefully and said that she was trying to procure few extra flowers as she had some extra rituals to be performed.

That evening I received a news paper parcel from the lady which contained four pooran polis, some fried sweets and a few bhajjis along with lots of goodwill. My investment of hibiscus did yield very good returns.