The Art of Taking

The Attack

It’s only 3.30 a.m. and plenty dark outside but the foot soldiers are already up and about. They get into combat fatigues, gather their weapons of mass destruction and silently spill onto the streets setting forth towards the battleground. Their target: ‘The Scented Garden’

The fatigues are actually cargoes and clothes replete with multiple pockets, polyethylene bags and other storage devices. The weapons of mass destruction never more than long thin iron rods (the longer the better, for those far to reach places) and curved into hooks at either ends. Sometimes even their bare hands are enough for gifted with night vision and the sixth sense radar they home in on every garden in the locality and some not so local. And all this in the wee hours when you and I have blissfully surrendered to the Sleep God.

Of course, wrecking a full-fledged garden on each and every occasion is quite an ambitious objective, so the troopers have to make do with any horticultural patch they can lay their eyes on, even a roadside flowering bush. Lately they have become quite indiscriminate, laying their hands on anything that grows. What with the ongoing population explosion increasing their intra-community competition and people keeping watch over their gardens or employing dogs for the purpose, now even the insipid mimosa, the ‘touch-me-not’ plant, has become a target.

I dare not offend a sizeable percentage of society by referring to this militia as flower ‘thieves’ or ‘procurers’ but rather as ‘collectors’, involved in the collection and supply of flowers. It is serious business, for no ‘collector’ worth his calyx and corolla would go home either empty handed or before four hours of hunting in all places including rock bottoms and rooftops. Or ‘floriclasts’ i.e. flower destroyers, because a flower picked is a flower destroyed.

The recruits come in all possible and some impossible sexes and ages- actually, the younger the better. It is easier to hoist flexible limbs and youthful nimble fingers onto branches and tree trunks than manoeuvre a plump hand when your paunch extends farther than the hand.

The marauding armies volunteer from all strata and sections of society, the BPL as well as the APL. One wonders what the upwardly mobile Mishra, dressed in the garb of a morning walker complete with Rbk trainers, is doing with a polythene bag full of pink hibiscus picked from a garden whose owner he doesn’t stop to thank? Surely the guy, after his recent promotion at least, can afford a flowerpot or two? And the middle-aged lady walking briskly in the park, polishing her nails a la Baba Ramdev? She can’t be a ‘collector’ too? She is a bonafide, health-conscious, respectable member of society! Dare you call her a thief!!! I stealthily follow in her footsteps, quickly ducking behind tree trunks as she looks over her shoulder. And sure enough as the moon that’s still around, she has a hiding place for her polythene bag and transfers her floral handful into it after each lap.

Ah! The little boys and girls! The age of innocence. But it seems not so innocent as to be above ‘collecting’ what doesn’t belong to them. What kind of family lets little children out in the dark when it’s not safe to do so even in the day? I wonder. But little ones are agile pickers and they leave no leaf unturned.

If you are an early riser and a morning walker like me you get to see armies of flower pickers crossing you by, bags at varying degrees of fulfilment, hands dipping into any tree that dares to bloom. And where the hand doesn’t reach…… The iron rod goes where no man has gone before. No question of sparing the rod and spoiling the view here. Flower, will take; that’s the motto. The magnificent blooms are deflowered before your very eyes and soon the trees are as bare as the day they were born.

Several questions arise within you. But you keep your peace, already feeling like a traitor for being the only one with neither a bag nor a rod. Plus you remember what happened the last time you had decided to play champion of the floral cause. You shudder at the memory of the belligerent aggression, the angry faces of the previously faceless mass that formed the park backdrop. They literally walked out of the woodwork. You were hopelessly outnumbered and later thanked your stars for escaping in one piece from the growing mob fury.

Their arguments outnumber them. “Do you think a few flowers more or less really make a difference when the nation’s coffers are being emptied into the insatiable pockets of a handful of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen? What happens to your righteousness then?” Good point, there.

“Besides, nobody picks flowers for himself; it is an offering to God. Would you deny God His daily flower? And us, the pleasure of giving? What would an infidel understand of god and the art of giving?”

The ‘art of giving’ sets me thinking. Is the real pleasure here in giving? Then why not give what we really have-prayers? Are someone else’s flowers better than our own prayers?

When the artist’s choice of medium is an iron rod twisted and hooked to pluck flowers, buds and inflorescences and pull stems, branches and even roots out of their sleepy beds, it looks more like the ‘art of taking’ to me. The determined look ready to fight hell or high water in search of that elusive and alien flower and the resultant cocky smile- all reaffirm my view that in taking (especially what is not yours) lies the original pleasure. Isn’t it also the original sin?

There’s a third argument. “These flowers would in any case have fallen off and wasted in a day or two. We are just picking them a few hours earlier and putting them to some use”, they say smiling disarmingly.

The Defence

Surprising, but there is a defence and it would be unjust not to throw light on it. To be fair, the Municipality has in it’s “Clean and Green” campaigns put up signs debarring the public from plucking flowers inside parks, a deed punishable with a fine of Rs 10/-(per flower or per park, you ask). The ‘floriclasts’ ignore the threat- for one they don’t see any ‘fine collector’ around. But, “Clean and Green” has caught their imagination. They clean the parks of all the multihued flowers and transform it into a monochrome green. A law-abiding citizenry, there.

The second line of civic defence after this Municipal pretence is the band of unorganised mavericks like myself who woke up one day to find her garden unrecognisably vandalised and ‘floriclasts’ stuffing all manners of petals into their packets and pockets. But like I said earlier, I was lucky to escape, thanks to my stars and my limbs that still respond to my command. A friend’s arthritic father was however not so fortunate. A lifetime of practicing and preaching Gandhigiri overflowed into the realm of the flora. His anti-picking sermons did not go down well with the irate mob. They threw a few punches and gave him an earful. His legal knowledge and Gandhian principles were better suited to a library or museum along with the 1940s environmental laws he was citing.

That put an end to our morning forays into parks and I am now on the lookout for new routes for my walk. That’s my end.