Fragrant flowers

In a world where nature’s bouty in getting reduced to tasteless, odourless packaged products anything that is naturally fragrant and excites ones olfactory senses is always welcome.

Sambhangi, Champak, Sampige. Shenbagam …Telugu ,Tamil, Kannada, hindi and Marathi.
On a Sunday morning standing under a grand Sampangi tree in the compound of East Parade church near Trinity circle, Bangalore evoked these very nostalgic memories.

With a very strong fragrance, sampangi can somtimes cause a mild headache, if it grows too close to your backyard in abundance.  On the other hand a flower or two can create a waft of a refreshing odour that can freshen one up and seduce the passer by.    

 Fragrant flowers like Malli poo, jaadi poo , mullai poo are a refreshing welcome to the bottled perfumes oozing out synthetic fragrance .

My favourite is  JATHI MALLI (PITCHI) Jasminum grandiflorum L. Oleaceae.

Courtesy : http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/horticulture/horti_flower%20crops_jathimalli.html

Jathi  is a variety of Jasmine with a purplish tinge with a very strong refreshing  fragrance . 

A creeper of Jaathi Malli adorns my terrace garden and it has started flowering ( albeit two or three a day) . It fills me with joy seeing it grow and flower every morning. 

It has been my long cherished dream to have a garden with fragrant Jaathi malli  flowering in abundance and wafting through the cool morning air from the balcony along the living room along with the early morning sunlight.

Jaathi Malli, evokes nostalgia of school days when dorning a long braid of stringed Jaadi malli or plain malli to school  on a double plaited hair was not so uncool.  Needless to say I would think it ‘oh-so-lacking –in-fashion-sense’ to wear flowers to work these days.

Times have changed … or is it me …