Why pluck flowers?

 It's the twilight hour. There is a fragrance in the air, the birds are atwitter, the mosquitoes are just getting their first (or last, at dawn) bites of the day. Those busy commuting are grappling with ground realities. Some lucky ones are stealing a few quiet moments of contemplation and solitude. But many, believe me, many even today, are busy surruptiously sneaking around streets, plucking flowers. Roadside flowers or home garden flowers peeking over the compound wall. This is a frequent sight in my parts.

Some are doing it with obvious relish, looking and hunting down the best flowers, much like a fastidious lady chooses her ladies fingers (okras) at the vegetable shop. Some men hurry along, muttering the holy name, clad in prayer attire, with the efficiency of the worshipper, hardly looking at the flowers as they pluck and dump them into their sachets. Some are simply making the rounds of their favourite street corners and houses, and getting the daily quota, glad of their divine routine.

Now, for heaven's sake, why pluck flowers?

I think flowers don't like to be plucked. They are there to please, and essentially want to be pollinated. They have their own agenda. They want to become lovely fruits and then seeds. It is the turn of fruits and seeds to be plucked, and dispersed. Have you noticed Nature doesn't pluck flowers, but only fruits? But man heard God's voice saying 'offer Me a (mere) leaf, a flower, a fruit or a drop of water, and thou shalt have pleased Me' (Bhagavadgita IX.26) The key words, 'with devotion', have been ignored, as we think that offering flowers or adorning the deity with flowers is important as an aesthetic or fiduciary task and will reap its due reward.

I love flowers, alas it is their fate that they are here to serve man. They shalt be plucked, trimmed, dressed, arranged, bunched, bouqueted, vased, strung into a garland, decked into hair, stuck on the ear, smelled, touched, admired, and finally thrown away. The Sanskrit word for a flower being removed from God's adornment is 'nirmaalya'. Here is the meaning from Sir Monier Williams' dictionary:

nirmAlya mfn. cast out or left from a garland , useless; worn the day before; n. the remains of an offering to a deity , flowers left at a sacrificial ceremony; stainlessness , purity; a garland made of flowers left at a sacrifice.