This morning, I was showing Raghav the flower that my mother brought for me yesterday from her garden - the 'manoranjitham' (Hari champa in Hindi). It is a unique greenish yellow flower with a fruity, intoxicating smell.
My grandmother often told me that it was a magic flower, because if you closed your eyes and thought of something - a fruit or some other pleasant smell, and then smelt this flower, you would actually smell the smell that you were thinking about, and that is why it had the name 'manoranjitham'.
When I shared this story with Raghav, he was so excited. He started thinking of smells at once to check if the magic really worked :) From oranges to bananas to guavas to chocolate cake and bhel puri and carrots and capsicums, he tested the whole gamut of 'food' smells....things that he liked and disliked.
"What the heck?! Why is it that this magic works only for fruits? It doesn't work if I think of vegetables and other foods!," he exclaimed at the end of the experiment. And we both laughed and laughed. :)
He suddenly discovered that the pollen from the flower had fallen on the sofa and bent down to peer at it. I remembered that we had a pocket microscope somewhere and asked if he wanted to see the pollen up close. Soon he was gathering the pollen on a piece of paper and then slipping it onto the slide, to look through the microscope.
"Wow! Amazing...the pollen is cone-shaped....they look so beautiful!," he said, peering into the microscope.
"But the magic doesn't really work all the time does it!" :)
So where is the magic really? In the story or the experience or both? :)
My grandmother often told me that it was a magic flower, because if you closed your eyes and thought of something - a fruit or some other pleasant smell, and then smelt this flower, you would actually smell the smell that you were thinking about, and that is why it had the name 'manoranjitham'.
When I shared this story with Raghav, he was so excited. He started thinking of smells at once to check if the magic really worked :) From oranges to bananas to guavas to chocolate cake and bhel puri and carrots and capsicums, he tested the whole gamut of 'food' smells....things that he liked and disliked.
"What the heck?! Why is it that this magic works only for fruits? It doesn't work if I think of vegetables and other foods!," he exclaimed at the end of the experiment. And we both laughed and laughed. :)
He suddenly discovered that the pollen from the flower had fallen on the sofa and bent down to peer at it. I remembered that we had a pocket microscope somewhere and asked if he wanted to see the pollen up close. Soon he was gathering the pollen on a piece of paper and then slipping it onto the slide, to look through the microscope.
"Wow! Amazing...the pollen is cone-shaped....they look so beautiful!," he said, peering into the microscope.
"But the magic doesn't really work all the time does it!" :)
So where is the magic really? In the story or the experience or both? :)
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
~ W.B. Yeats
~ W.B. Yeats
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