flutters and glides

I remember reading in a Sheldon novel in which a character goes and visits a place in Greece where the whole place is swarming with butterflies of all colours conceivable.
Though I read this novel way back during my 9th standard, I can still vividly recall the desire I felt to experience that explosion of fluttering colours gliding and floating all around me…something that is happening to me everyday for the past week.

My college is actually 4 blocks of 3 story building that is set in the borders of a square plot of land. The area in between the 4 buildings consists of two perpendicular pathways intersecting at a circle right at the middle of the plot. It is set in such a way that the paths from the centre (in which the college is planning to set up a fountain…god knows when though) leads to the entrance of the blocks.

Apart from the pathway, which is cemented the rest of the area is fully filled with a wild growth of grass where even a whole dog can easily disappear. Surrounding the entire periphery of the college is also these high grasses except for the area where the busses are parked.

My college is located at the outskirts of Chennai. You can even see paddy and corn fields on the way to our college. Apart from the 5 to 6 stray dogs and a whole horde of sparrows of different varieties, you can get a glimpse of amazingly green parrots streaking through the light blue of the quite morning sky. These are the pathetically few endowments of nature that adds some beauty to our otherwise bleak and dull college…or so I thought till these winged creatures came into our midst.

During the breaks and lunch time, I and my friends will mostly be standing at the corridor, in front of our class room situated in the third floor. Our major time pass is looking at the fellow students passing below us. But one fine day, we saw something that made me catch my breath…the entire expanse of the wild green grass seemed to shimmer and flutter with a life of its own. Golden flashes glided and swirled in the air just above the grass, making it look as if it had a life of its own.

Walking to our way to the canteen, we discovered that the yellow magic that had suddenly got infused in our campus was thousands of butterflies frolicking all over the place. Disturb one clump of grass and out of it flied hundreds of butterflies. Medium sized all uniformly coloured in real yellow these bewitching creatures made us exclaim out with pure wonder and delight.

Where did they come from all of a sudden? Is this the breeding season of butterflies? If so, why weren’t they present the same time the previous years? Be whatever the reason these beauties decided to enliven the campus, we are definitely going to enjoy their presence. Just looking at them makes you feel so good. They make us forget about the assignments to be submitted, the internal politics between friends, the dreary hours that stretch ahead of us and all the other mundane routines of day to day college.

Just as these wonderful visitors came without warning, we know that they will vanish from our college without any announcement. But till then…aaah…flutter-glide-sit down-takeoff and flutter again!!!