On a barren road, what a January afternoon taught me

There was a time back when I was in the 10th grade, and our family went on one our beloved long drives to a camping spot in the outskirts of Hyderabad that we wanted to check out. It was the middle of January, when the curtains of winter quietly and gently started drawing themselves, slit by slit, to the warm sunshine of spring, and a blue sky speckled with white, cottony cloud. I have no idea the name of the place, nor how far away it was from home- just that there was white grass, unknown flowers tucked by dandelions on the side of dry, barren roads all bordered by wee rocky hills, with camping spots sitting amongst the grass.

Photo Credit- Google

It was a pleasant backfire when the camping spot happened to be closed that day, and we had to U-turn and drive back home, which wasn't something particularly bothersome. On the way back, we stopped on the side of the road to take a break at the tea stall across. It was then that my mom and I were walking along the grass, and we saw this small row of yellowish-orange small, thistle-like flowers that looked quite distinct from the flowers we usually see every day along the bushes in the ground floor of our apartment on the walk to the bus stop for school.

It was around the time Google Lens was beginning to be quite the rage, and we took a picture of it. It turns out that these little flowers that we happened to see on a lone road we did not the name for, were called safflowers, and these were also known as "poor man's saffron", because the dried petals mimic the color of true saffron, even if not the properties and the aroma and is used as a cheaper substitute for it. It also turns out that it has a long history in traditional medicine, as we got to know, Chinese traditional medicine, where it is often used as a treatment for arthritis when used in the right amounts, even though it alone is not a complete cure.

Photo Credit- Wikipedia- Roads in India

It's surprising how the littlest things that we think are fleeting or not as important sometimes hold within them fascinating truths, moments, history and future in them. Thinking back to this, it made me realize that human lives, often painted by metaphors like 'a journey and not a destination' and others in similar connotations, is a road not only with twists and turns, but with safflowers growing along the way- moments of unexpected happiness and faith that turn up at the twists and turns when we most need it. Safflowers are not just moments- they are people, experiences, feelings and thoughts that make our lives human, messy and unpredictable. It's easy to dismiss the safflower as a small, meaningless flower along the tar roads. Along our busy and long roads, it's looking around to catch the safflowers tucked along the way that give us the motivation and hope to see every new day as a gift and every dream as a door to new beginnings and points of growth in our lives that we learn to perceive and cherish.

It's fascinating how the elements of nature are an embodiment of the nature of life itself, and how for guidance, you just need to look around the green that surrounds you, the azure that envelops us above and the sun that has been keeping its promise since the birth of time.