The Floral Dispatch#1: Flowers x Creativity 🌷
Dear reader,
Welcome to The Floral Dispatch, a monthly newsletter on flowers, words and creativity.
Last month, I joined hands with Hoovu Fresh to create Hoovu Finds, an online community dedicated to flower lovers everywhere. I’ve been drawn to flowers ever since I was a child. I remember going to the park near the house with Ma, collecting the harshringar and plumerias that had fallen from the trees. I placed them in my hair, in between my books, and smelt them so deeply, the pollen probably helped build my immunity to allergies.
Flowers are also iconic to Indian culture in so many gorgeous ways: from the rangoli patterns made with colourful marigold and rose petals to decorate homes during festivals to the gajras worn in the hair by Indian women over the centuries.
Moreover, when you live in a city like Bangalore, you get used to the sight of blossoming trees in a myriad of purples, yellows and pinks at different seasons through the year. Flowers, I tell you! *sigh*
Here’s a flower lovers playlist to play in the background as you read this newsletter.
The Poetry of Petals
1. Gulmohar, When it Rains by Devika Mathur (via The Woman Inc.)
The shades of skin- glowing like April mornings
a soft warm tone of Gulmohar tree upon my eyelids-
a doorway to oceans, two pebble eyes
Open in the open sky
This tree a meteor of clouds to my mind
to remind me of Earth, soil and home.
Rains: a thunder of God’s voice
Gulmohar tree- pockets of cellophane wrapped on its bark
to bloom something more
tender, quiet roar of women.
I see leaves, rustling
with leeks and violet rays uttering a dialogue of beauty
of dark violet raisin pressed between my palms,
This tree has me. These raindrops seeps into my fist and eyes
as a whole another Goddess.
as a whole another memory.
Gulmohar- your orange red hair blooming backwards
As if life slips from you easily,
So softly as a lover’s touch.
You have a staircase full of outgrown desires
You leave it and let it slip
through tunnels of gargantuan clot.
Gulmohar-
You speak and yet you look quiet.
Sharp, eccentric noise of fallen leaves.
Follow Devika’s writing on her blog.
2. To a flower-bloom in the garden by Sourabha Rao
a slow, soft independence, this blooming grace
that smiles in the face of a withering so certain, so prescribed
immense. unscheming. quiet. extraordinary
immortal in the memory of you
always flowering. always describing. always affecting
like a thought from naught journeying to its fullness of clarity
like musty old books, like poems, like songs
like all things that rouse you, that make you come alive
then you see. you see that there is so much you haven’t yet experienced.
and that is enough to want a life of gratitude and hope
to hold on
to be quietly adamant and full before that final fall
Follow Sourabha’s writing on her blog.
3. Flowers by Cynthia Zarin (Poetry Foundation)
This morning I was walking upstairs
from the kitchen, carrying your
beautiful flowers, the flowers you
brought me last night, calla lilies
and something else, I am not
sure what to call them, white flowers,
of course you had no way of knowing
it has been years since I bought
white flowers—but now you have
and here they are again. I was carrying
your flowers and a coffee cup
and a soft yellow handbag and a book
of poems by a Chinese poet, in
which I had just read the words “come
or go but don’t just stand there
in the doorway,” as usual I was
carrying too many things, you
would have laughed if you saw me.
It seemed especially important
not to spill the coffee as I usually
do, as I turned up the stairs,
inside the whorl of the house as if
I were walking up inside the lilies.
I do not know how to hold all
the beauty and sorrow of my life.
Floral art for the soul
1. Fares Micue’s Floral Self Portraits
“As my personal style kept developing, flowers and plants became a staple element in my practice, becoming my way to express my connection with nature, growth and natural energy."
-Fares Micue
2. Manya Cherabuddi’s Floral Mandala
“Creating this mandala with fallen Brazilian Tree Roses in silence was flow for me 💛 completely meditative, intuitive and I was “in the zone”. The tree is fascinating, blooms only between Jan-Feb, leaving treasures every morning for us to collect and play with! Without even realising, I chose 8-16-16 flowers (counted only later) and the patterns came to me intuitively. There was no planning, just being and going with the “flow”. Perhaps we are looking to create sync, rhythms in life, tune in deeper to our natural rhythm. Can you relate?”
-Artist Manya Cherabuddi
3. Blick’s collages replaces guns with flowers
French artist Blick worked on a series of powerful collages that juxtapose black and white photos of soldiers at war with lush flowers replacing the gun.
What we’re reading
The Age of Houseplants by Anne Helen Petersen (On indoor plants as a form of aspirational culture.)
Rhea Recommends
A note from Rhea Karuturi, founder of Hoovu Fresh:
“You pluck my favourite flowers everytime you see them. You tell me it reminds you of me. I tell you not to pluck them. So, the next morning you get me faux flowers. They're evergreen, you say, just like our love. You like them because they're perfect and they don't need any care.
I wanted something different, I wanted to plant a garden with you.
Faux flowers also wilt. You keep them in the darkest corner of your room because they don't need any sunlight. Faux flowers are made from the fragment of a perfect reality but since they don't grow old, they wilt their presence. When something is immortal, they're taken for granted.
Faux flowers aren't a symbol of life; a garden full of flowers is. The flower that you got someone today is. The one that wilted among the bunch and made you realise you should have looked after it more, is the symbol of life. We can't take care of something that'll never perish. Vulnerability is why we offer affection. There is a mortal beauty in the short-lived that gives us hope when we're under the same sky.
Send me flowers and let me name them. When they grow, I'll keep them close. And before they wilt, I'Il remember us together.”
-Biru Panda
___
I’m not someone who’s very good at acts of care. Acts of care require patience, time and they need to be done regularly. Watering a plant, clearing the table, tending to a habit. And so when I see fresh flowers, that’s what strikes me - it’s a fight from the moment they arrive to keep them alive, a fight that you enter knowing you’ll inevitably lose.
And yet people fill their homes, their cars, their hair with these delicate flowers everyday. And when their blooming gives way to wilting, we try again the next day.
I asked Manya Cherubuddi, an artist I’ve admired for a long time, how I can make my flower dyes last for longer, stronger. And instead of an answer she gave me a question - why do you want these colors gifted by nature to act like the colors we get from chemicals? Why does that become a standard we hold this different animal to?
And I love that. The idea that some things aren’t meant to last forever, or even for very long. That when you twist a string of jasmine into your hair or place a lotus on your table, you do it knowing that tomorrow you’ll have to do it again. And that’s how we bring beauty into the day - by paying attention, by trying - again.
I have always loved this idea from childcare research that the relationship between love and care is not what we think. We think we take care of people and things because we love them. But the idea is that we don’t care because we love, we love because we care.
And that’s why faux flowers fade. Because you can’t care for them. But real flowers are a continuous invitation to care, and to fall in love.
Thank you for being a part of this flower lovers newsletter. We have some exciting community events planned for you, and will be launching our first Hoovu Flower Zine in the coming weeks. Stay tuned, and happy blooming! 🌷
Love and gratitude,
Rohini
Absolutely loved it! Too much gorgeousness to take in <3 And also discovered a new flower to me: the Brazilian Tree Rose:)