Fine grains of sand tickle her feet. Sun shines radiantly in the sky and rays of light sneak through green tree tops. She walks towards a makeshift wooden bench in the shade of a Champa tree. The tree is short, bears long green leaves but it is now leafless. White flowers blossom in bunches on its knobbly branches. A few white flowers have covered the ground as well. She steps forward carefully because she doesn't want to tread on any of those delicate white flowers. For a moment she remembers the time when she was a kid, how she used to fold the petals of a flower backwards, turn it into a flowery ring and dance around showing it to the people around her.
She isn't a child anymore though, she muses. She sits on the bench alone and then lies on her back looking at the patches of the sky visible through the bunches of white flowers above. With a light breeze, two-three more flowers land on the ground to join the flowers that are withering now, their edges turning brown.
She smiles to herself, looks around. When she is sure no-one is looking at her, she stands on the bench and tiptoes. She extends her arm to touch those beautiful flowers on a branch her hand reaches. Then she picks up a fresh flower from the ground.
She smells the flower to her heart's content, folds its petals backwards with utmost concentration and sticks them in its stem. She fastens it on one of her fingers and stares at it with a faint self-complacent smile.
She is still the same child, even after twenty years.
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