The Garden Where My Grandmother Waits

The summer sun always felt softer in my grandmother’s garden.

Not cooler just gentler, as if it understood that the flowers blooming below deserved warmth without cruelty. I must have been seven or eight when I first noticed this strange magic, but the garden had been there long before me, a secret sanctuary tucked behind the old white house with green shutters and creaking steps.

Her name was Parveen, though everyone in the village called her Amma. But to me, she was Dadi, the keeper of stories and sugar-dusted rotis, her dupatta always carrying the scent of cardamom and marigolds.

I remember that garden like I remember dreams half real, half wonder. Each morning during my summer holidays, I would race barefoot across the stone path, dodging bees and brushing against tall lemongrass blades, until I reached her side. There she’d be, bent over her flowerbeds, whispering secrets to her plants as if they were old friends. Maybe they were.

“Look, chandni is blooming early,” she’d whisper, eyes twinkling. “That means a guest will come soon.”

“How do flowers know these things?” I asked once.

She touched my cheek gently. “Flowers know everything, beta. You just have to listen.”

So I listened. To the rustling of neem leaves, the slow hum of bees in the hibiscus, the gentle lapping of water from the stone birdbath where sparrows danced and splashed. I listened to her voice, humming old lullabies while planting basil, her fingers stained with earth and love.

And sometimes, when the afternoon sun began to doze behind the mango trees, she told me stories.

“Long ago,” she’d begin, wiping her hands on her shawl, “this garden wasn’t just a garden. It was a place where time slept. Where people came to remember who they were.”

“What do you mean?” I would ask, snuggled close.

She would smile, not answering directly, as if it was something I would understand when I was older.

One story I remember especially well of the white butterfly that only appeared when someone was being thought of with love. “If you see it,” she whispered, “it means someone far away is missing you. Or someone who has passed is saying hello.”

I believed her.

So I watched for that butterfly every day. And when I saw it hovering over the jasmine vine, I’d run to her, breathless. “Dadi! Look! The butterfly!”

She would nod solemnly, her smile calm. “Someone remembers you today.”

It felt sacred, those summers. But time, like weeds in untended soil, grew wild and fast. I grew older. My visits became shorter. School and then work took me farther away. And then one day, she was gone.

They told me over the phone.

A heart too old to keep beating.

I came home to a quiet house and a quieter garden. The marigolds were still blooming, stubborn in their cheerfulness. But she was not there, not bending over her roses, not humming lullabies, not holding my hand.

I sat in her chair, beneath the neem tree, where she used to peel pomegranates and feed me ruby seeds one by one. Everything was still.

Until I noticed something something small, something white.

A butterfly.

It floated past me like a breath. I didn’t move. I just watched it settle on the jasmine, gently beating its wings. A silent greeting.

Suddenly, I was seven again, barefoot and wonder-filled. I could almost hear her voice beside me.

“I told you. Flowers know.”

I returned every year after that. Not just to visit but to tend. To prune, to water, to whisper. I planted the same chandni and basil. I hummed her lullabies to the wind. I even told stories to the birds.

People said I was foolish, holding on to something invisible. But they didn’t understand.

They never saw her.

I did.

Every time the butterfly came, every time the wind smelled of cardamom and rose, I knew she was there. Not just in memory, but in the soil, in the leaves, in the sunshine that still refused to burn too harshly.

Children in the village started calling me “Amma” now. Some come to help in the garden, asking if it’s true what I say about flowers and butterflies and time sleeping here.

I always smile.

“Ask the jasmine,” I say. “Ask the wind.”

And sometimes, when no one is watching, I close my eyes and walk the old stone path. I imagine her there, standing by the hibiscus, hands dusty, smile kind.

Still waiting.

Still loving.