As of yet, Untitled

The Beginning



I fell in love with an Indian once, two summers ago. He was a kind and forgiving gentleman, and as exotic as his cocao skin. Before him I only knew American men, with their thick calves and thicker skulls. He was like a blossom for me, beyond beauty as a little white flower bud, growing and showing me its secrets as its petals yawned for the sun.

We met in a flower shop in India. I had just graduated from a minor American university and decided that I had not really been educated, so I boarded a plane with my waitress earnings with no assurance of my safety except for a bar of soap. I first travelled through Europe, but found it to be mostly populated with thick accents. Their cultures were not a surprise. Then, I travelled East. Past the Indus River was a wild none of the videos could capture. India captured me, and so I stayed. I'd never witnessed such a humility as with the Indians--they gave me their flowers and, soon after, their hearts.

Within the first week I had a small, two-room apartment in the packed city of Mumbai. Though it was an ocean city, I saw little of it during my daily routes. I worked for India's Reserve Bank as a minor teller, for very little money. I was comfortable, however; my only cost of happiness was the little apartment, a few food items, and eventually the flowers to bring the sun into my apartment.

The reason I went to that particular flower shop is that one of my friends at the bank, a French woman on similar travels, recommended its beautiful blooms. They decoded India, she said.

The next day I had off, I went to the shop with the greatest desire for orange and red petals, blue and violet. Once in, I was drawn to the small bud of the white Dasavala flower. I stood inspecting its soft exterior for what must have been an extraordinary amount of time, because a man came up to me and spoke about its even softer, pink interior. He said once the Dasavala bloomed, the white petals seemed to beckon the eye inwards, toward the soul of the flower, where its worth lie. This man was Ravi.

He continued to give me a tour around the flower shop, describing each blossom as passionately as if they were each his daughters. It was clear, though, that the Dasavala was his bride. All others, no matter how splendid, were still not quite as elusive and wistful as its luminous petals.

By the end of my tour, I had chosen small flowers of every color and style. So many had I chosen, that I spent my first week's pay there, in that shop! Ravi, the sweet gentleman with the chocolate thumb, carried some of my many flowers out the door. He walked with me around the shop, down the street, past the small fruit market, on past the many temples for the many people, back down some narrower streets, up my stairs, into my apartment. At none of the moments during our walk had I said, "Ravi, would you please come in?" Yet I felt no discomfort in letting this perfect man behind my locks and bolts.

Once inside, he made no affection known but for the flowers, which we were setting on their new vigils over my life. Some went on my kitchen table, some went outside, on my balcony's tiny wooden table between the two wooden chairs. The Dasavala, placed last, went in the window in my room. Ravi placed it so that the sun would hit its blossoms in the morning, while the sun was just ripe, and innocent.