Searching For Frangipani

Searching for Frangipani

The frangipani flower was very common in my childhood. Large white flowers with pink or yellow centres lay scattered on the ground while we played. Sometimes they wafted down gently on our heads as we carelessly brushed them away. They were the frangipani days, when the flowers twirled around us and we did not notice them. For they were so much a part of us that we forgot that they were there. And we grew up.

The flowers disappeared. We did not even realize that they were not there because the days were busy and filled with so much else. It did not matter that the faint scent of frangipani had gone.

And then one day I was in Bintan with my family playing about in a pool surrounded by shiny black rocks, when a gnarled old tree graciously flung down a handful of forgotten white flowers with pink centers, on us. “What beautiful flowers”, I said, lifting up a handful as they floated gently by. A memory stirred. Later I asked one of the hotel attendants the name of the fragile blooms. “Frangipani”, he replied.

So I discovered the frangipani again in Indonesia. And I also discovered that I had even left its name by the wayside.

Back in a city, reeling under one of the cruelest summers in recent years, I set out to look for the glowing white flowers. But they proved to be strangely elusive. “The trees had been cut down, they didn’t grow here anymore…they had never grown here…”was what many people told me.

My gardener searched along with me but there came a time when even he was ready to admit defeat. “Not here”, he shook his head. The crows cawed mockingly overhead.

And then one day I saw them again. A great tree with creamy blossoms arching over a defeated house, waiting to be pulled down. With joy I brought home a cutting and planted it with hope. A frangipani tree would grow again.

Broad green leaves grew thick on the scrawny branches as the city yearned for rain. The gardener watered the infant plant more tenderly than he watched over the others. I was impatient- where were those flowers, those starlike flowers of yesterday?

The garden closed in on itself as the longed for raindrops did not deign to fall. The frangipani put forth more leaves and not a single flower. The city simmered and glistened as an unnatural summer raged.

There is still no rain in my city. And the frangipani still has not blossomed. But I have brought it home once more. And the name has been remembered. There has been an effort to restore much of what had been lost….but maybe it will take more than memories to make the frangipani put forth flowers once again.