Emergence

My balcony is filled with citrus plants. Too many, my once in three months gardener darkly mutters. Pomelos, limes, sweet limes, curry leaf (yes, it belongs to the same family as citrus: Rutaceae). They don’t have progeny in their futures, they are all leaves and no fruit. (Fruitless equals useless to my maali.)
Grafting is the sex toy they need and I’m too lazy a gardener to help them procreate. Still, they are resilient. They continue to grow, putting out new branches filled with leaves every growing season. Their leaves are beautiful. Thick, aromatic, broad based. As much as I like and admire my citrus collection, there is a creature that positively lusts over them and my curry leaf plant. It is a toxic lover – it loves the leaves yet destroys them. The plants patiently wait to be decimated, then put out fresh leaves to welcome this vengeful lover the next time she comes around. My therapist would have a lot to say about this endless cycle of offering, destruction and forgiveness.

I’m getting carried away. This is no soap opera. I refer, of course, to the Common Mormon butterfly. The black butterfly with ragged edged wings and white spots along the edge. Sometimes a cluster of red spots where the wings come closest to the body. It is a common swallowtail and the females display mimicry of the inedible red bodied swallowtails. Amazing stuff. Anyway, the Common Mormon lays her eggs on my citrus and curry leaf plants.

Here, I must apologise for misleading readers of previous pieces describing my balcony. Research shows me that I had mistakenly identified the eggs of some unknown creature (tiny pin heads at the end of infinitesimally thin stalks, like microscopic mushrooms) as the eggs of the Mormon, when, in fact, her eggs are tiny globules laid on the underside of leaves or stalks of the host plant. End of Biology lesson.

The eggs hatch into little monster instars (my new found zeal for biological accuracy prevents me from using the generic term: caterpillar. Actually, a caterpillar goes through five instar stages on its way to becoming a pupa). They are stars alright. Stars at eating. Consequently they don’t stay little for too long. They grow visibly bigger between am and pm. You would too if the sole purpose of your life was to eat. And eat. And eat some more till my citrus plants have no leaves left. I do not exaggerate. Two instars can strip my two feet tall sweet lime plant to bare branches in a couple of days.

Once the eating frenzy is done, the caterpillars pupate. The pupa is green and bulbous with tapered ends. At one end, two horn like protuberances can be seen, like Hellboy’s head bumps, not red but just as cute. The green becomes drier as the pupa matures. This is all I had witnessed first-hand until this morning. It was super frustrating to see every stage of this amazing life cycle without ever once seeing the butterfly emerge from the pupa. The dried husk of the pupae would cling to the plants, mocking my bad timing and observation skills.

Well, today was not that day. Sleepily looking out of the kitchen window this morning, I yelped. The better half jumped in fright. It was so worth it though. The pupa hung from the curry leaf plant, and so did a very wet and bedraggled butterfly. The wings drooped and it hung on, swaying in the breeze. It rested there all through breakfast, as some clear blood equivalent coursed through its veins, firming up the wings, strengthening the body. I caught the better half keeping an eye on it just as often as me. And then, suddenly, and we missed the moment, it was gone. I think it was a male. Or maybe a female in one of its darker avatars.

No, I didn’t see it actually hatch from its pupa. That’s still a goal. But what I saw on that curry leaf branch was thought provoking all the same.

I can take comfort in the knowledge that emergence is only a step in the process. I imagine the butterfly: its insect brain knows that the shell is gone, it’s time to shake off the ennui, and the moment of reckoning is at hand. A little rest to gather its resources and test its wings. The pupa and the ugly (but cute) caterpillar are things of the past. Flight is imperative. No time to waste. A short life calls. The butterfly responds.

Egg. Instar. Pupa. Emergence. Compare this reverse birth to our own. We come into the world, wet, bedraggled and frankly ugly. Life begins now. Whether we will choose to make it ugly or beautiful is an unknown. The butterfly emerges, wet, bedraggled and beautiful. Life is about to end. A butterfly has clear goals even as it sits on that branch, only waiting to be strong enough to accomplish these: pollinate plants, mate, lay eggs and share its beauty.

There’s a message in here somewhere. The butterfly gets it. Perhaps it will hit me when I am witness to that ultimate moment of emergence. Until then, my citrus plants will continue laying out a buffet for those instars. Me, I’ll make emergence my goal, and leaving behind the ugly bits to wither and waft away like the pupae shells.