Butterflies are pretty things !

This is a photograph I took recently- of a butterfly in flight.

When I look into this I remember a poem of Kumaran Asan ( great Malayalam Poet of yesteryear)

Eee valliyil ninnu chemme...

pookkal pokunnitha parannamme ..

Roughly translated ..

Look Mom, flowers have taken to flight slowly,

from our beautiful garden, is n't it lovely ?

You understood... this poem is a dialogue between mother and child.

Perhaps this was a poem written for Children..may be for that reason..and this was taught in schools..

I also learned it in class II or III when I was in our Village Primary School. Way back...

During those days it was a normal practice to enact some poem or skit that is to be learned as a lesson.

This poem was also enacted. I learned the poem easily and could recite without mistakes..So I became the child in this enactment and the mother was an older girl from a higher class. My friends started teasing me because she was 'the lady' in the school ..and we all pretended to be eligible bachelors then !

So when the teacher asked me to sit in her lap I was a bit reluctant and I sat in an awkward position. She had to hold me tight. As if, if she did not, I will run away. So sitting in that position and singing this harmless poem will not match at all. What then happened is .. I was in the corner of room and looking at the wall singing the last lines. The enactment was not only a total failure but an opposite action of the meaning of the lines. Every one wondered who in the world proposed these two persons as mother and son.

After sooo.. many years...

Recently I happened to see that 'affectionate Mother'- all silver hair - round spectacles..a thin frail figure. She must be around 60. She looked at me held my hand and after some enquiries she looked into my eyes .. and there was a complete silence. Suddenly we both burst into laughter.. we laughed and laughed ..until our eyes got wet.

In between the laughs she said she recently saw the Emperor Ashoka.. I remembered she had acted as Ashoka's queen.. We both again burst into laughter thinking about the current status of that Emperor! We laughed and laughed and laughed..

until we met with a staring look of a bald - bespectacled man - that was her husband.!

Time flies .. but not slowly like this butterfly.