Chasing Butterflies

Chasing Butterflies

It was back in the summer of 1990. The classes were over for the day, but I was still in the classroom. There was a big chart hanging on the wall which illustrated the life cycle of a butterfly. I didn’t realize I had been staring blankly at it for minutes until someone started calling out my name multiple times in a crescendo. It was the school bus assistant. Before I could turn around to face him, he quickly grabbed me by the hand, and dragged me downstairs yelling all the way to the parking lot where the school bus full of students had been waiting for me. When I climbed into the bus, I could see anger and fear painted on almost every face, in different proportions though.

1990 was also the year when I had lost my mother to a stroke. I remember one of my relatives coming to my school in the lunch time itself to take me back home. When I got home, her lifeless body had already been covered in some kind of white cloth. I tried to run towards her but the people around me wouldn’t let go of me. Everyone was crying, but my father. It seemed his red swollen eyes had run out of tears, and his face was frozen in a twisted scream of agony. Later that day, they shaved off my head and made me set the large pile of wood on fire which covered her that she was barely visible from the outside. I cried a river that I could have put the fire off with the tears. I couldn’t watch her burn to ashes.

The school bus dropped me right in front of my house. I waved my friends goodbye before I went into the house. My father was sitting in the couch reading a newspaper. He always asked me how my day had been. I told him that the teacher taught us about the butterflies that day, and I wanted one of those charts too.
“Okay. I will get you one on your birthday”, he said flipping a page of the newspaper with his left thumb. My birthday was still a couple of months away. I couldn’t wait that longer.
“No, daddy. I want it tomorrow”, I immediately replied.

The next day when I was home from school, my father hadn’t gotten back. So I went to my neighbours’, and waited for him. When I saw him coming, I couldn’t see the big chart in his hands. I was very sad, and thought that he might have forgotten. I went up to him and stood beside him as he fished the key from his pocket to open the door locks. Later that night after we had dinner, I mustered my guts, and asked him about the chart.
“Oh! I’m so sorry son!” he exclaimed, and reached for his briefcase. He took something out of it. It didn’t look like a chart- It was a book. A thick hard-covered book.
“I couldn’t find the chart, but this book looks way better”, he said and handed me the book. Initially, I wasn’t pretty excited about the book. I wanted the exact chart that hung in my classroom wall. But when I flipped a few pages, it was more than I had thought. I lifted my head up to face him with a smile on my lips, and hugged him.

Day by day, my fascination for butterflies only grew exponentially. I would spend much of the time reading the book my father had gotten me. It had beautiful pictures of different varieties of butterflies from around the world. I would sneak out from my house into the backyard gardens to play with the butterflies. I really enjoyed chasing them down.

There’s nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. Yet it’s a wonder how those wings are born of struggle and transformation. One fine morning, as I was chasing one, I happened to smack it. The poor butterfly fell on the ground with one of its wings detached from its body. I didn’t do it intentionally. I felt very bad. I picked up the butterfly and its wing, and rushed into the house. I tried to glue the wings together but they only broke further into small pieces. It had died already, and I started sobbing. I had killed something which I really loved. My father heard me crying, and came up to me to ask if I was alright. I told him what I had done and that I felt very guilty about it.   

“Is there any way I can bring it back, daddy? I want to see it fly again”, I asked wiping away the tears rolling down my cheeks.
“No, son. I’m afraid not.  We can’t do anything about it. This is how the world is. Nothing ever comes back from the dead”, he voice sounded different. I looked at him. He was staring into the photo frame, which had a picture of my mother, with misty eyes. I held back my tears. I wasn’t still familiar with the very concept of death. Sometimes I hoped my mother would come back, and believed there was similar chart of life cycle of my mother too. I daydreamed her emerging out of her cocoon with bright coloured wings which couldn’t wait to fly her to me.

Someone has said, and said it right that butterflies are self-propelled flowers, and the flowers tethered butterflies. The former flutter seemingly aimlessly in the air of freedom while the latter disperses fragrance of love. Together they illuminate the spring with their vivid colours. I had started believing that these butterflies were the kisses that my mother had sent me from the heavens above. This belief led my fascination grow into an obsession which worried my father a little. I was always found either reading the books on butterflies or chasing them down in the gardens. I never tried touching any after that incident. I just chased them up to the edge of the world until I ran out of breath or couldn’t feel my numb feet.

I used to wonder why butterflies were named so. It’s not like they are made up of or taste like butter. Flutterfly, maybe? At nights, when I was half asleep, I used to dream and partly imagine to hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly. I guess there’s no better way to fly than flying in a formation with butterflies, twirling and gliding through the air in the space courted by the green grasses and the endless skies. And I kept dreaming that the butterflies would take me to their queen who had the brightest and the biggest wings of all that I could easily build my own world and grow flowers of love on them. The queen butterfly and I would then dance together in the meadows, and follow the wind drifting into the nothingness. My mother, the queen of butterflies!

Years later, I realize how we all are just like butterflies. Butterflies can’t see their wings. They can’t see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can. People are like that as well. We all flutter for a day and think it’s forever. We come into this world out of nowhere, flutter here and there in search of a few things throughout our lives. Some soar high in the skies reaching for the sun and the ever-changing clouds while some fly so close to the ground that they get stepped upon. Some don’t even make it out of the cocoon, and a few get their wings broken. But then ultimately all of them just disappear into nothingness again without living any trace behind. 

It’s almost 2017, and I still go the parks carrying the beautiful butterfly book with me. I spend my time with the butterflies talking to them. I see drops of love falling from the skies and landing on their wings. They flutter their wings, and disperse them around. A few drops land on me too, and I can easily feel it’s her. But I want some more of it. So I get up and chase them. I have found my own reasons for chasing butterflies for all these 26 years. Have you found yours?