Cosmos, Goa & Ophelia

Diwali! I looove this time of the year!!! I'm going away for the next 6 days. I'm going to Goa. Imagine that...6 days of not being woken up by the alarm, six days of sun and sea and sand, 6 days of no work. I'm going to have fun. We plan to rent bicycles and pedal everywhere so hopefully, we'll get a lot of exercise as well.
I remember Diwalis in Delhi and right now, I'm thanking my stars that I won't be in Delhi this Diwali.

Lemme present my picture of the day - Somewhere in the deep recesses of KBR Park again. Reminded me of Shakespeare's Ophelia. I can just see her there in the water. All we need are flowers to complete the picture and of course, Ophelia. We'd have a pretty nice picture, like so -
Well, my flower fascination continues...I was talking with Sloppy S the other day, and well yes...about flowers. We both agreed our favorite flower of all is the 'hnahsin,' and how we haven't seen those in years because they only grow wild (I think). Anyway, feeling a little nostalgic, I decided to pull up images of hnahsins, opened Google images and sat there dumb - I'd forgotten what they're called in English! And I knew for sure 'hnahsin' wasn't going to work. I wracked my brain but couldn't come up with anything. All I remembered was that they've got this Universe/Space-sounding name :)
I asked Sloppy if she knew...
'Ummm..carnations?'
Duh!:p
I think that's the only flower name she knows.
Anyway, I decided to blindly grope through Google in the hope that I might come across the right flower and the right name.
'Universe+flowers' I typed. Nothing.
'Space+flowers' Again nothing.
'Stellar flowers'
'Astral flowers'
'Star flowers'
I even tried 'Quasi-stellar flowers.' :D
All zilch. I couldn't rest for two days because this little flower bugged me so much. I don't remember all the fancy search terms I came up with but nothing, no query gave me the result I wanted. It was so frustrating I wanted to tear my hair out of my head.
Then finally, second day late afternoon, I found it!
I had moved on to broader terms - wildflowers! I should've started with that.
Thanks to the internet and this site, the name I'd been so diligently trying to find I know now is Cosmos! Hallelujah! So these are cosmos, if you don't know what they look like - Beautiful, aren't they? If I were God, I'd replace every cultured rose on this earth with cosmos. I'd do away with cultured flowers altogether and fill this planet with wildflowers. I remember this hill we used to go to when we were kids. It was high up above the town - always green and always breezy, one rickety windmill and that's all, rolling green hills and the sun and the breeze and us..and cosmos..thousands of them! I think heaven would be a little like that. Everytime I think of heaven, that's how I picture it. I can't think of golden streets and golden robes. I see green mountains and hills and wildflowers and fruit trees. And T-shirts and jeans.