My scented Memories- By Pratikshya Tripathee

‘Urgh! Mom, it’s other’s land, the tree is on that land, so technically I would be stealing their flowers!’

It was a beautiful Wednesday morning. I had risen before the sun had; not because I wanted to but because my mom could not tolerate my lazy morning sleeps. Simba, my dog, had again crapped all over the front gate, my sister was having a fit as her research was not making sense in the slightest and tempers were indeed running high. Still, it was a beautiful morning!

My morning routine always involves trying to get some sleep unnoticed by my mom’s sharp eyes. ‘Wake up early, exercise, medicate, go running, drink water, eat this, don’t eat that’, you can imagine what my mom’s morning routine involves.

‘Nanu, go collect some flowers for Pooja’, yet another order from my mom flew into my ears. Oh no! I absolutely hated leaving the house early in the morning, and that too to collect some jasmines that had fallen on the ground from someone else’s tree. I tried to get myself out of that, but after about a quarter of an hour of my mom lecturing me about how I should never say no to Puja orders, how it’s not stealing because god created them for all and what not I resigned to the worst. I grabbed a plastic and a jacket and stepped out of the front gate.

The cool breeze hit my face and jolted me awake like nothing had done; winter was indeed coming. After a minute of walk and a couple of turns, I was there, standing below the beautiful tree, more than hundreds of night flowering jasmines beautifully decorating the pavement below. I bent down, a plastic in one hand; my other hand trying to find flowers that hadn’t been ruffled by footsteps and tires already.
A minute into it, from amidst the noises of morning chores from houses around, I heard a different sound, a goat bleating. It was as if I just had a déjà vu. I smiled weakly to myself as memories; memories of years earlier came rushing to me.

‘Kids, wake up already; wash your face. We are getting late for the puja. Go, collect the flowers or there won’t be any left’. Dashain mornings always started with my grandma’s orders. Not that we weren’t awake; me and my cousins spent hours in bed talking among ourselves or simply letting our heart get soothed by the beautiful sounds of Koshi. We needed no alarms, no orders; the chirps of birds were enough and if not the grunts of the buffaloes certainly were. Our eyes watering from the smoke coming from the stove below, we would make our steady way down the wooden ladder. My grandpa would be busy with a kettle of milk tea, bucket filled with fresh buffalo milk beside the stove. Me and my three siblings would run towards the tap, wash our face and run back to the house. I remember how my head always hit the top of the low wooden door. Somehow I never felt the pain; maybe it was my thick hair or I was just too excited to feel it. Rubbing my head roughly, I would run towards the shelf, grab a little wooden basked and run out of the house, my cousins behind me.

The night flowering jasmine’s tree was just a few seconds away from our home, just beside the buffalo shed. One of my cousins would climb the ladder up the shed, reach the tree and shake it. Hundreds of jasmines would rain upon us and as kids those were the moments of sheer happiness. As we bent down to pick the flowers up, we would hear the goats tied in the shed bleat; goat kids would be running around us, ruining the flowers, too difficult to catch. When our basket was filled we would feel content, happy to have delivered our early morning’s job.

It was different, it was happier. We would rush to our village as soon as our Dashain holidays started to celebrate with our whole family. 17 members would be crammed in a house; we slept in the attic, the rooms were just not enough. We compared our Dashain shopping, played cards even as kids. We spent days planning picnics, asking our parents for money and always ended up in the bank of Koshi with some packets of noodles but believe me that tasted better than momos and pizzas. We danced, we sang, we ran, we played; all of us together; Dashain was beautiful, Dashain was fun.

Suddenly, a bike rushed by my side and broke my thread of memories. As I brought myself to reality trying best to locate the unruffled flowers in the pitched road, I noticed a pain building in my throat. It was all so different. Earthquake had ruined our home in the village and a few months later same year our grandpa had passed away of cancer. No buffalo to milk, no low wooden doors, no picnics beside Koshi. Dashain was silent now; Dashain was just in my memories.

Slowly, I stood up my hands clutching the almost empty plastic bag. The sound of Koshi rang in my ears, buffaloes grunting, goats bleating. As the beautiful scent of the jasmines reached my nose, I closed my eyes, trying to recreate the scene from years before, trying to recall all the memories. But, it was like trying to hold water in my cupped hands, my memories were slipping away.

Slowly, I opened my eyes, turned back. Wiping the tears off my face, I made my solitary way back home, my scented memories accompanying me. I never had had such a sad start to Dashain.