Midnight love

Nishagandhi shouldn't be planted in the garden, she knew. Myths and legends overflowed- each more dramatic than the other. Consequences more grotesque than one previously heard. But they all had to do with snakes.

But one thing that overrode all these was the hot and intoxicating smell of the drooping and sly flower that refused to bloom but once in six months, to meet her midnight lover.

Grandpa's place was a plethora of mysticism. Even in the clearest of days, there was a shadow of something that was waiting to happen. Cats took more significance in the that place than anywhere. Hoots of owls were more dismal and dispiriting... the only thing that had marked the place different from a horror movie setting was her bossy and demanding grandmother who was the very essence of life.

When she took the fleshy plant that was rudely uprooted by the gardener, it was her grandma who brushed aside the thousand myths that clung to it and told her to plant it in the copse of the snakes. 'Sarpa Kaavu'. Abode of the snakes.

Sheltered by low overhanging boughs, it was her ideal retreat. True she'd been chased away many a times by the gardener who mumbled words she sure were bad and cursed the younger generation and their idiocy. But she always returned to lie on the sun spotted ground and read her books.

The cool, eternally wet and dark brown mud was easy to dig and formed the new home of the plant. She hoped it would bloom soon.

But it had a will of its own. Six months passed and its greedy roots dug deeper and deeper, its leaves glistened with wickedness..

Windows that were never shut all through the year from which she could see spots of orange lights of her far away neighbors house. Windows where she often stood watching the mobile Petromax lamps that would often glint by the river...Windows that let in sprays of rain that drenched the wooden cupboard and made it swell...

The summer breeze carried a lot of smells. But as the night wears on, single strains of smells- distinguishable and potent. The smell of gun powder of a shot that a poacher fired long far away... The smell of fish roasted over an open fire by the boatmen at night...

The smell of the Nishagandhi flower that bloomed but once a year at midnight, she realized with a start. Insistent and beckoning... Putting down the book she was reading, a glance at the clock that ticked with unfailing tiredness. This was the time. She knew it. The plant had of late withdrawn... its leaves that once stretched their fingers had coiled around each other. Almost like snakes coupling...

Picking up her torch that to date hadn't been used she clicked it on. A faint flickering wishy-washy light. Rattling the steel body against her palm, she found a steady stream of light.

Climbing down wooden staircases that creaked, confident no one would wake up in a place that sounds filled the stillness of the night and rocked the sleeping lullaby. Her grandmother could never sleep in the city and they had rushed back to the discomforts that they were used to.

Stepping past toads that looked up and scuttled away, throwing a warning that there was an intruder in their land of the night.

Fear had never been a part of her education. There were enough classes and lessons learnt on recklessness and stupidity, but not on fear.

Sure steps that were placed by slippered feet after a quick scan for lethargic reptiles that failed to crawl away and had to be prodded to wakefulness by the tip of her slippers.

There wasn't any darkest of nights in summer. Maybe the clouds threw some light borrowed from the sleepless sun.

Inside the whorl of leaves that appeared reluctant to part, forming almost a panicle, she found the white flower that appeared translucent in the night light. The overpowering smell towards druggedness, heavy and of what would have been characteristic of an antiprana...

The slick black bodies of the snake gods that were locked in eternal embrace. Scattered showers of saffron and turmeric from mixed prayers to the Nagas... Floods and drought, springs, wells and rivers, rain, and fertility - to the Nagas who ruled them all.

She turned when she heard the fast swish that cut grooves on the wet mud around, to the direction of the river that curled around in a bend close by... A scaly body that glistened with water that was more viscous than usual in the caressing night light...

Ignoring her exigent presence, in strokes that were careless and beautiful it moved to the Nishagandhi plant that seemed to bend low with the overpowering weight of the flower... lower and lower.. lower until the flower dropped effortlessly to the ground.

Fact and fiction blended in her eyes into shades of indiscernible colors. Nishagandhi, mistress of only the night, enticer of snakes, carried away by the first one to claim her...

That's where they found her the next day, crushed white flower in hand and a blue bite of claim....