You’ll always see my mom wrapped in floral prints, and I think her affinity for them subconsciously comes from the ephemeral presence of flowers in India.
In India, flowers are not just flora. They are fragrance, ritual, offering, and adornment. They live in our kitchens, in our temples, in our grandmothers’ prayers, in the tangled curls of women on the back of motorbikes, and in the soft clink of bangles at the market.
As a little girl, I’d sit cross-legged on the cool tiled floor during monsoon season in Jaipur watching my dadi string jasmine into a gajra. Her fingers were fast, like muscle memory.
When I visited my nani in hot Ahmedabad, she would massage a jasmine scented coconut oil into my hair weekly. Even today, when I walk by a chameli plant at night and catch a whiff, I’m transported back to these hot summers with my grandmothers.
But my favorite flower cameos are those draped around rearview mirrors in rickshaws. Garlands of marigolds and roses, often wilting, but still sacred decorate the dashboards of autos. If you’re lucky, sometime the auto rickshaw may even have floral wallpaper on it’s sides and walls.
As Ayurveda and Indian home remedies gain popularity in the West, I think of the flowers that find their way into ancestral recipes. Rosewater in toners, sandalwood in creams, turmeric and sandalwood blended with milk to become face packs.
Even in food, you’ll find rose petals soaking in chai, sugared into gulkand, and layered into biryani.
Lately, I’ve seen more young people returning to this quiet intimacy with flowers. Wearing gajras with crop tops. Embroidered marigolds on converse and jean jackets. It’s a beautiful ode to nostalgia and the natural world in our hyperconsumerist and tech-forward Western world. An ode to our nani’s rituals and beauty that is casual– weaved into braids, mixed into creams, and incensing our food.