Yollow, Little Yellow!

This little one has been with me since August.

It doesn’t bloom often. It does so only when it feels ready, as if it knows flowering is not an obligation but a decision.

Last month, pests found their way in. Slowly, almost politely at first, the green surrendered. Leaves browned, curled inward, wilted. Day by day, life seemed to withdraw from the surface. Until one morning, there was nothing left to defend. Just a dry, brittle form pretending to still belong to the living.

Guests noticed. They always do!

“Why don’t you replace this plant?” they asked.

“Everything else on your balcony is thriving. This one is clearly gone.”

I tried. Truly, I did.

But every time my hands moved toward the pot, something inside me stopped. It felt less like holding on to a plant and more like listening to a voice that couldn’t speak, “Give me time mumma, I will come back…”

Like a child asking for patience before returning transformed, wiser and whole.

So I let it stay.

Days passed. I kept looking at it. This little quiet, brown reminder of waiting.

And every glance carried a strange ache: not grief exactly, but longing. The kind that comes when hope has no evidence, yet refuses to die.

Then last week, during one of my slow mornings, I was relaxing on my balcony, chai warming my hands, “Chap Tilak…” filling the room and a book resting open without urgency. That is when I saw it.

A small green leaflet!

So small it could have been missed. So fragile it could have been dismissed. But it was there. Alive!

Soon, two leaves followed.

Not apologetic. Not hesitant.

Almost triumphant. “See? I told you I’d return.”

A few weeks later, this little one which was once written off as dead, reduced to two leaves and disbelief, now formed a bud.

Now, it has bloomed. A bright yellow flower, unafraid, unapologetic, lighting up my Sunday morning like a quiet victory song. As if to say, “I’m still learning how to be here again.”

This is how resurrection looks, isn’t it? Not loud, not dramatic, but persistent!

A simple form of resilience, rooted, patient, faithful even when the world calls it over.

In the pause between decay and return.

In every struggle that chooses survival.

In human hearts, and in plants that refuse to let go…