autobiography of a red rose
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I am a beautiful red rose in a garden where there are only roses. Aha! I feel so happy when I see the immaculate beauty that I am and my friends are. Just when I see the beauty of my friends around me, I can well imagine how beautiful I also must be, for, after all, we are all alike.
People coming to this garden, appreciate each and every one of us and we feel as happy as punch. I feel the happiest as, I am the largest rose of a bright red colour and all visitors point out to me, then I feel as though I am on top of the world.
When I hear the conversations of the visitors, the thrill that follows is beyond your comprehension. I have to agree that I am very beautiful and my entire species is a beauty to reckon with. You know when people describe me as a combination of elegance, beauty and boldness all wrapped in one, I feel as though I am in the seventh heaven.
All around me there are roses of different colours, there are red roses that is of my colour, there are pink ones, light pink and dark pink ones, light lemon colour ones, a very light mauve species and can you imagine, there are also some black ones. What a variety of colours we present and I often imagine the colours of the painting box of God. He must be having a huge variety of colours.
The garden, in which we stand, is a public garden. I believe the garden belongs to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi or, it is responsible to look after us. Daily a few gardeners come to see what all we require and they report to their seniors. The gardener's water all of us daily prune us to make us look neat and tidy.
At times, the gardeners take our cuttings to plant elsewhere. When they use the scissors on us it pains us and as far as I am concerned, I being rather big, feel for the Youngers when the gardeners' scissors play on their bodies, I feel pained for them. It is real fun and a pleasure to realise that, I belong to a species of flowers that are known for their beauty, fragrance and colour, and are also looked after with great care and love.
Day after day we all and I too keep watching people coming in and going out of this garden. At times, I hear some visitors even asking a gardener to give them a few of us. I have seen with my own eyes, several of my little brothers being plucked and even stolen. What I hear is that, selling any of us is allowed but of course stealing is never allowed anywhere.
I often wondered why people buy us, till one day I heard a customer telling the gardener that he required some of us for his sister's marriage. Then I came to know that we are used by man for many purposes.
Some of us are offered to God in worship houses, other lucky ones are got tied up neatly into bouquets to be presented to brides and bridegrooms, or on birthdays. However, some of us who are in bad luck, born under bad stars serve as wreaths for the dead.
This thought and knowledge of our different uses makes my heart burn with fear and I start wondering what fate God has allotted to me. My prayer to God starts as soon as I see my brethren being sold and if at all I am to be sold, my first choice would be that, I be used as an offering to God, my creator at any place of worship. It is only the lucky ones who have such a fate, that I realise, and I can only hope that luck favours me.
These days it is the winter season and we are all enjoying the beauty of the weather and also enjoying good health and fun of blooming to our heart's content. Soon summer will set in and most of us will wither away in that scorching heat.
For the present all is fine let us wait and watch what fate has in store for us. Ah! Yes I forget to tell you something very important, and that is my grandparents and their generation of roses was the favourites of the first Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He used to call for one of them daily to be stuck to his jacket buttonhole.
Though life in his buttonhole must be suffocating for that old generation but, I feel at least that generation got the honour of being so close to the heart of so great man. The entire generation got the honour because he used to call for a new rose daily and that was real great respect my grandparents got.
Now, all that I can do is to see what fate awaits me; all will be well if the end will be well, for people say that, "all is well that ends well". The end has to come but, where and how will be of great importance to the individual whether it is me or any other of my colleagues.