Sea of poppies

My father has a very interesting collection of books. In there, you will find the complete works of William Shakespeare, Rabindranath Tagore, Will Durant. You will also come across a number of encyclopedias by branch of knowledge. And then there are books by Osho, Autobiography of a Yogi, etc. - he has them all! I consider myself to be the ignoramus illiterate one in the house, and have been able to go through only a salty small insignificant drop in the ocean of knowledge. But that is not our topic of discussion for the day (may be some other day).

My father's collection also had numerous books on painting and photography, which I grew up browsing. One such book had a picture of a field of tulips on its cover that caught my attention right from childhood. The colorful tulips were so vibrant that for a long long time I believed such pigments existed only in books. The garden looked like a rainbow as the red, yellow, white and magenta tulips literally waved as the winds from some celestial land came down to kiss them.

Later, I read that the picture was from the Kuekenhof Tulip Garden of the Netherlands! These fascinating tulips made their Bollywood appearances in movies like 'Silsila' (who can forget the super hit song ‘Dekha Ek Khwaab’ featuring Rekha and Amitabh, both for its enchanting melody and the beautiful tulips in the background). We have also seen them in ‘Hello Brother’ (featuring Salman Khan and Rani Mukherji along with the tulips in the song ‘Teri Chunariya’). Other than the book on my father's shelf and these few Bollywood movies, my only brief encounter with tulips so far has been in Germany.

One fine day, I was amazed to find (what appeared at first glance to be) a field of tulips in the Bay Area... near my very home! However, I realized soon after that these were the California Poppies, the state flower of California. In the crepuscular haze of dusk, the garden looked like a dream. Here is my very own sea of poppies!