Draped in a woven shawl, Lily tilted her head up to inhale the fragrance that she had come to associate with autumn and home. In the part of the tropical world where Lily grew up, autumn did not turn the leaves into myriads of warm shades. The season, when it arrived, made Shiuli or the night-flowering jasmine bloom.

Like its name suggests, the flower blossomed at night and dropped to the ground at the break of dawn, giving it the epithet – the tree of sorrow. In its wake, the fallen flowers would create a carpet of white and orange on the dewy grass, enticing her to bend down and cup them up in her hands for a whiff. Its sweet aroma, unlike its fragile petals, lingered in the air through the misty mornings and made Lily reminisce about her childhood spent in this little town in the North-Eastern province of India.

Silchar, where Lily had spent the first eighteen years of her life, nestles in a hairpin bend of the Barak river. In its two hundred years of history, the town had only one claim among the First-in-the-World accolades. The townfolks were proud of the pioneer polo club, although Lily never saw anyone play the sport during her existence. It was a town of laid-back people who spoke a rustic dialect of Bengali and loved living a peaceful life.

Standing on her rooftop, Lily could see the verdant expanse of her land, filled with one to three-storeyed houses interspersed with betel-nut trees. Being in a high seismic hazard zone, the town built over an undulating floodplain was devoid of tall structures. Violent earthquakes were a part of their lives, as were the incessant rains and cyclones rising from the Bay of Bengal during the monsoon. 

When the town was not wet or flooded, it would be sweaty and humid. That was why Lily looked forward to October when the days grew chilly and dry, with a mild wind carrying the fragrance of Shiuli around during the latter half of the month.

In the distance, small hills of the Barail range jutted out of the valley in isolated clusters. The highway that led to those hills passed through bamboo forests and tea gardens before slowly ascending in altitude. These tea gardens were the homeland of Assam tea, the worth of which Lily would realize years later during one of her trips to Europe. But to her younger self, these plantations were more about winter picnics than a cup of tea.

The winter of her town also brought the memories of a harvest festival, when the townfolks would worship the sun and fire. The children built a hut made of haystacks to camp out the night before, only to burn it down in the morning. The families would gather around the bonfire created, soaking the warmth, and savor the sweetmeats prepared by the elders. 

A smile played across Lily’s lips as the forgotten tradition made her nostalgic about the days of her childhood.

As she prepared to sell her home and move on with her life, Lily knew she was leaving a part of her behind and carrying a jukebox of lost tales that she would narrate to her grandchildren one day.