The Flower Seller

This morning, as I stood at a roadside tea stall behind the Writers’ Building, the city paused for me in an unexpected way. Amid the clatter of cups and the drifting smell of tea, I noticed an old man seated nearby, carefully arranging flowers into small bouquets—petal by petal, thread by thread—preparing them for a day of selling.

Age revealed itself in his face and in the unhurried rhythm of his hands. Every movement carried the weight of years. One could not help but wonder what necessity compels a man of such age to sit on the streets of Kolkata, coaxing livelihood from fragile flowers. Life, in moments like these, feels unapologetically difficult. The struggle for existence is neither abstract nor poetic—it is immediate, tangible, and relentless.

People passed him by without a glance. He existed in plain sight and yet remained unseen. Perhaps that indifference is not cruelty but survival of another kind—each passerby rushing toward work, toward responsibilities, toward battles of their own. Everyone, it seems, is fighting something.

And yet, the thought lingered: what would life be without struggle or challenge? Perhaps it would lose its texture, its meaning, its urgency. Still, excess, in any form, is unkind. Just as comfort can dull the spirit, unending struggle can quietly erode it.

When I finally walked away, leaving the tea stall and the slow rhythm of his hands behind, I carried a simple wish with me—that today, at least, his flowers would sell, and that his quiet labour would be met with its due reward.