Bed of Roses

Sunday evening is a good time for reflection as one looks forward to the mounting doom of Monday workload. I decided to cool my heels at Lalbagh, a popular tourist destination in the city. Located amidst the hustle of a congested city, this green abode looked welcoming and filled my heart with joy as I lunged out of the auto rickshaw. There were throngs of people to greet us, and accompany us into the breathing lung of B'lore, the other one being Cubbon Park.
My companion seemed to have more expertise on the park since she had been here twice before. Although it took her a wee bit to find the largest and oldest tree of the park, a humongous, umbrella of fresh green with roots carved up to 10 ft above ground!
Apparently, this tree flowers once a year, and boy its like dead meat. Yea, the fruit/flower of this beauty smells like rotting flesh! Maybe that's how it has grown to be so big and strong - spreading its roots and branches far and wide - and when the parents are not watching, gulp the little kids who climb and jump off its strong tentacles.
But what I feel really bad for is B'bay-ites who are going to lose gorgeous and rare palm trees at this time next year. Its like squeezing out the profits and leaving the hand that fed to die.
We ideal-led about the park and sauntered magnetically towards the water-body, a lake with a walk lined with gulmohur trees blooming in fiery orange. We spotted a duckling, quite an ugly one at that, which kept dipping its head and chasing invisible fish/worms. There was a school of murky looking fish, with an orangish fish which seemed like their leader; they were so close to one another that my first impression was that of an alligator or shark stealing up towards a juicy prey, only to change course and swim away somewhere else.
We walked towards a bridge over the lake where I had been promised a view of fat fishes swimming up to the surface to show off. As we neared, we saw knots of sleazy men throwing in rubbish in the water. On the other bank of the bridge was an enormous marshy water-body with pink lillies in full bloom. We stood on there, admiring the beautiful flowers and the gigantic leaves from between which they emerged. Someone spotted and pointed out a slim water snake which had slithered up a leaf, and was sunning itself. Promptly, a stick was thrown towards it. Missing mark the first time around, a stone seemed to ruffle the snake, who promptly slunk back into the gloomy waters. I was enormously pissed. To add insult to injury, the man standing next to us decided to spray his tobacco-reddened mouth-waste onto a lilly leaf. This started a chain reaction of everyone next in line who began spitting into the water. It seemed as if they were making a statement 'We approve of this lilly lake. Lets spit on it as a mark of our seal of agreement'.

Strangely enough, I did not spot a single rose flower blooming in the entire of Lalbagh , which had been so named after the beautiful red roses which it bred.