As per Wikipedia, ‘Bougainvillea’ called as ‘Bouganvilla’ in India, is a genus of thorny, ornamental wines, bushes and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers. It is salt resistant, heat resistant and drought resistant and it is evergreen flowering plant is dry tropical climates. Its bright coloured flowers make it a decorative plant in many countries.
My apartment complex in Bangalore is surrounded by Bouganvilla plants. These thorny crawler plants are planted near compound walls to prevent trespassers and unwanted pests. While the flowers (actually it is the leaves, but hey, pot’ah’to, pot’ate’o) are brightly coloured, they are odourless and a little rough and feels like tissue paper.
You see this plant wherever you look. Due to its omnipresence you hardly give it a second glance and you don’t respect its flowers. It stays there like an ornamental, necessary nothing. You do not give it any attention if you were like me.
For example, you go ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’ when you see a beautiful rose flower. You stop to look at its
beauty, take a couple of snaps of the flower (close-ups and distant shots, if you see what I mean), take a selfie with the flower in front of your face and caption it ‘The beauty and the beast’ and immediately post it on Facebook and Instagram. Your friends will come up with comments like, ‘Who is the beauty here?’ or ‘I don’t see a beast in the picture, I see two beauties’ etc.
