Bells of Joy

Those wildflowers, that grew beyond my backyard, those purple little things, I still don’t know the name, I called them ‘bells of joy’. They are still there now when I am back home during holidays, still undemanding, unassuming.Covering those otherwise plain fields with tiny bits of magic, magic that is childhood. In the rains, those purple little lights dazzle across the green seas of grass, covered with fireflies in those monsoon nights.

Its a small memory really not something major that had life changing implications, but somehow its a strong one, a neutral memory neither happy nor sad, its just there. Of something which was not significant enough for me to take the pain to find the name of the flower even, but yet something that survived through the billions of moments that escaped from the confines of memory.

This makes me wonder what are the memories that really make it in our hearts till it stops beating? There are those big life altering moments and those tiny seemingly insignificant moments, some of them etch into us others are washed away with the tides of time. There are some moments that we wish we could remember exactly as they occurred with every tiny detail, the colors and the sounds, the smells and the textures, we rethink them a million times just so that we don’t let go of any tiny detail. But with time the colors once vivid, fade. You forget whether it was orange or red. You can’t seem to remember if it was sunny or cloudy, you can’t even say now if it was happy or sad, only fragments remain. The blank spaces are covered with our assumptions and some with imaginations, yet others with hope.

They are confusing little scoundrels these memories, they seem lost at times and ever present at others when all you want is to run from them. Sometimes after years later suddenly you remember the day when you sat on the porch as a 10 year old with your best friend, soaking the sun and discussing Harry Potter, you see your 13 year old self on the couch with Little Women in your hands imagining yourself as Jo, in your favorite corner which knows all your heartaches better than any other you see yourself crying over the first heartbreak, in time Harry gave way to Austen perhaps but all these memories lingered on sometimes bleak and faded.

It is a part of us, a part of us that survived through the years, a part of us that is not going to change, it is where we can tap into to know in times of doubt what we are, it is the memories that tell us of our roots, they are winds below the wings we spread to soar.

So I am not letting go of those wildflowers, they have become a part of me. I may not see them everyday, they may not miss me, but in them my little heart lives as it knew how to live when it was as young as I was.