The Grace of Waiting

My house in Delhi came with a beautiful garden that held a small lotus pond. On occasion I would see my house-boy, Surinder, sitting beside the pond, gazing at the blossoms. On day I sat down beside him. He pointed at a half-opened lotus flower, and we watched. Before long, an unopened section flopped open. There was nothing delicate about it, not a slow unveiling, but a flop, accompanied by a flopping sound – “flawp.” It took about twenty minutes for the entire blossom to open. Twenty minutes of exquisite tension in which nothing happened but the obvious. We laughed with the pleasure of it every time another petal unfurled, and our time was complete with the completion of the lotus.