Small wings. Long memories.
I was not looking for a butterfly.
In fact, I wasn’t looking at much of anything.
I was walking around the grounds of our home in a leafy part of Kottayam, a few kilometres away from the bustle of the town. The morning was quiet. The kind of quiet that allows your thoughts to become louder than the birds.
My feet followed their usual route while my mind wandered through a collection of thoughts that seemed far more important than the morning around me.
Then something fluttered into view.
Not dramatically.
Not urgently.
Just enough to interrupt my conversation with myself.
A butterfly with black wings and three neat white dots on each side seemed to have appointed itself my travelling companion.
For a few moments, it danced around me.
Then it disappeared.
Then it returned.
Then it disappeared again.
It behaved very much like a friend who cannot decide whether to leave a gathering or continue talking for another five minutes.
Eventually, it settled on a low branch nearby.
And that’s when I stopped.
Not because I had suddenly become a butterfly enthusiast.
But because the butterfly appeared completely unhurried.
There it sat, opening and closing its wings.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
With a rhythm that was strangely soothing.
Open.
Pause.
Close.
Pause.
Open.
Pause.
Close.
The movement was so symmetrical that it felt less like an insect and more like nature quietly breathing.
For reasons I cannot fully explain, I found myself standing there watching.
A grown man staring intently at a butterfly.
Had anyone walked past, they might have assumed I was conducting important scientific research.
I was not.
I was simply fascinated.
And then, without warning, the butterfly opened something else.
A memory.
Suddenly, I was no longer on my morning walk.
I was back in my childhood.
Back at my grandmother’s house during the summer holidays.
Back in another corner of Kottayam.
Another time.
Another world.
A world that seemed permanently filled with butterflies.
Yellow ones.
White ones.
Multicoloured ones.
Large ones.
Tiny ones.
So many that nobody thought of them as remarkable.
They were simply part of life.
Like trees.
Or clouds.
Or cousins.
There were dragonflies too.
Some small.
Some surprisingly large.
And like many boys of his generation, one of my cousins believed dragonflies existed primarily to demonstrate his creativity.
He would occasionally catch one and persuade it to carry small pebbles.
Sometimes he would tie a piece of thread to it and watch it fly around trailing its unexpected accessory behind.
At the time, he considered this an impressive display of ingenuity.
The dragonfly may have had a different opinion.
Children often have a remarkable ability to love nature while simultaneously being completely misunderstood by it.
The butterfly eventually flew away.
As butterflies do.
They are not known for long conversations.
But something had changed.
The gloomy mood I had been carrying earlier had quietly disappeared.
Not dramatically.
Not permanently.
Just enough.
And in its place was something lighter.
It struck me then how little it sometimes takes to shift the direction of a day.
A song.
A smell.
A familiar face.
A photograph.
Or, in this case, a butterfly that had absolutely no idea it was improving someone’s mood.
Perhaps that is one of nature’s great gifts.
It asks for nothing.
Explains nothing.
Yet somehow it can open a door to places we thought had quietly disappeared.
Including parts of ourselves.
As I resumed my walk, I glanced back one last time.
The branch was empty.
The butterfly had moved on.
But the memory stayed.
And somehow, my steps felt a little lighter than before.
WORDSOUPS 