Hollyhock Quiet

Hill Station, India · nature

A hollyhock opens wide in soft afternoon light, its centre yellow and patient. The kind of flower that belongs to old gardens.

Hollyhocks grow tall in Indian hill stations the same way they grow in English cottage gardens — straight up against walls, sometimes head-height, sometimes higher. They're not native, but they've been here long enough to look like they belong, and they've become an unofficial signal that you've climbed high enough that the air is cooler.

This one was in a garden in a town that doesn't need naming — every hill station has one of these gardens, kept by someone who has the time to keep it. The flower had opened just that morning. The light was coming through the petals at exactly the angle that turns the white almost translucent. I held the camera steady, made the photograph, and moved on. Some pictures just announce themselves and ask you to take them.

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