Anthuriams
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With trembling fingers, Nilakshi gathers up the freshly cut anthuriams into a scarlet bouquet. These were her little Leila’s “Antuviams” as she lovingly called them. Together they had planted, nurtured and pruned the potted plants, until they were adorned with the scarlet slipper like flowers, stemming out of their crowns of dark green slipper like leaves. Everyday, as soon as the sun was up, Leila had skipped into the garden to “count the antuviam family members’.
Special love was ravished on the newest blossoms. In the afternoons, precisely at four o’clock, she would be toting the little orange bucket with water into the shady little garden to give the “thirsty antuviams’ some ‘tea’. And when tea time was over, she would fondly pat the red heads of the ‘antuviams’ “goodnight”.
The flowers were so dear to her that when she lay still for a month, burning with dengue fever, she kept murmuring in her unconscious state, “My little ‘antuviams’, I am sorry I cannot tell you ‘goodnight’.” Her mother Nilakshi attempted to comfort her. “Dear little Leila, Dear little Leila,” was all she could say. But when she went home from the hospital, she gave the antuviams special care for Leila’s sake. Now she places the anthuriams into a tall porcelain vase of water, and gently leaves it at the head of Leila’s white casket. As she bends to kiss the pale lifeless cheeks one last time, she whispers, “My darling, your ‘antuviams’ have come to bid you ‘goodnight’. And as her tears fall on the white face, she adds in a softer, barely audible voice, “Rest in Peace.”
Rebekah A. Fernando
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