LEGACIES

I never knew the beauty of the pongamia pinnata blooms, till I saw a woman, slender and linen-clad,
wear   it   in   her   hair,   a   single   stem   in   loosely   wound   hair.

Now I see it through her eyes, see it lying on the ground, simple and unassuming. She wouldn’t have
plucked it, no. She is that girl you may have known in school who was quiet and sure, delicate and
strong as bamboo reed, who saved a wayward ladybird by gently sliding a leaf under it and leaving it
by       the       roots       of       a       tree.

This woman, her hand would have reached down, the flower would have been lifted gingerly, her
companions stopping and looking back at her. Look, how pretty, she would’ve said. She may have
hesitated a moment before tucking it in her hair. She may have forgotten about it until she reached
home and unwound her hair, her hairbrush stopping short as she saw the stem caught in the tangle of
hair. She would have reached for an old, favorite book, the kind a silverfish is proud to call a home,
and  saved  the  flower  between  its  pages,  her  smile  a  reverie,  there  but  not  there.

Someday in the future, weeks, months, years later, her daughter may take that book out, catching the
now-brown flower as it is about to fall. Holding it between two fingers, delighted, she too would say,
how pretty.