Not too long ago, the flowers you see in this picture were beautiful and glorious.

They blossomed from tiny buds to pretty, glorious flowers; and reached the pinnacle of their beauty.

Everyone used to stare lovingly at them.

Girls wanted all of them to adorn their beautiful hair. Guys wanted to pick these flowers and gift them to their girls.

But nobody could pick them.

These flowers were the mighty ones. They were located high on top of the tree – unreachable for the human hand. From that height, these flowers stood up and showed themselves to the world like a Gucci Model on the runway, at the Milan Fashion Week. They glistened in the sunshine, and depicted their glory to the world.

This went on for a while.

Until their beautiful white colour started fraying at the edges.

Slowly, tinges of brown started emerging, as spots, in-between the white exterior of the flowers. They started showing up at all odd places. In-between the edges, at the corners, near the shoot…

Day-in, day-out, what were once an objects of glory, the pièce de résistance of the world, sank slowly and steadily into the grimy pit of rusty decay.

It was as if they were growing old.

One fine summer morning, everybody that woke up in the city was greeted by vigorous thundershowers. People welcomed the rains. The rains brought much-needed respite to what had turned out to be the worst summer in the past decade. Kids ventured out and danced in the rain. Mother hurriedly picked all the drying clothes from the clotheslines. Fathers sat by the balcony glancing through their newspapers, catching up on all the election news.

That was when it happened. A strong gust of wind hit the tree. The tree, which was already tilted like a crooked man resting himself on a wall, swayed like a tunic fork. The branches rustled vigorously like Moaning Myrtle from Harry Potter.

That was the moment these flowers officially ended their short tryst with glory. They were no long untouchable. Their frayed stalks detached from the branches, as they fell down on to the cemented ground in a silent plop.

That was when I found them.

They lay amongst scores of their counterparts, splayed across the ground. Soon, the sweeper will find them, and bag them. They would end up in a landfill or they may even be burned.

What surprised me was how they were least bothered of their plight. They rested calmly atop the concrete skirting around their tree. It was as if they had resigned themselves to their fate. Their appearance betrayed calm acceptance.

As I kept looking at these flowers -I wondered, didn’t these pretty flowers deserve a longer life?

But then again, did they even have a life? This was their destiny.

Because, even the prettiest of flowers would breathe their last in unglorious ruins.