Kabir Deshpande

But flowers do not care about promises between cousins.

By the end of May, the red would slowly fold into itself. The petals would soften, droop, surrender. And he would start watching again. Not for them to bloom. But for them to disappear.

The day before I left, he would sit quietly near the window.

“If I don’t look at it, maybe it won’t go,” he once said.

I did not know how to explain seasons to a child who thought love could delay flowers.

Years passed. We grew. Summers became shorter. Responsibilities longer. The stool near the window disappeared. He learned how to count months.

But last year, when I visited in May, I noticed something.

The football lilies had bloomed again.

He stood by the window, taller now, pretending not to care. Then he glanced at me and said, very casually, “You came on time.”

The flowers were red. Still soft. Still glowing.

And for a moment, we were children again, measuring love in petals and promises, believing that as long as something bloomed, nothing would ever really leave.

He checked as if the flower bloomed only for him. As if it needed his permission.

When the first hint of red appeared, a shy blush between green buds, he would run inside breathless.

“It’s coming. It’s coming. He will come now.”

As though I arrived attached to the petals.

The year he turned seven, I reached before the flowers bloomed. He looked at me suspiciously.

“But it’s not red yet.”

“I couldn’t wait,” I said.

He studied the plant, then me, as if trying to solve a mystery. That night, he whispered, “Maybe it will bloom faster because you’re here.”

And somehow, two mornings later, it did.

Bright red. Fierce and soft at the same time. Like the excitement in his cheeks when we stepped out for treks with uncle, our tiny backpacks bouncing. Like the cricket ball we lost on the terrace. Like the glow of the computer screen when I taught him his first PC game, and he pressed the keyboard like it was sacred machinery.

I stayed as long as they bloomed. Just like I promised.

Every summer had a colour.

For most people it was yellow. For us, it was red.

Not the loud, angry kind. A soft, glowing red that bloomed quietly outside my uncle’s window in Pune. The football lily. The May flower. A flower that looked like a tiny sun had decided to rest on green leaves.

Every year, before I left, my cousin and I made the same promise.

“Next time you come, it will be when the red flowers bloom,” I would say.

“And you’ll stay till they go?” he would ask, eyes wide, pinky finger stretched out.

“Till the last petal falls.”

He was too young to understand months. April and May meant nothing to him. Time, for him, was measured in flowers.

Back home, my summer would inch closer slowly. But in Pune, he waited at the window like a tiny guard of the garden. Every morning he would drag a stool, climb onto it, press his nose against the grill and inspect the pot.

“Has it turned red yet?” he would shout to my uncle.

“Not yet,” uncle would reply, smiling.