The Penang Botanical Gardens’ Bloom

Nana stood at the edge of the paper, her pencil hovering like a hummingbird unsure where to land.

The blank page stared back, white and wide and wrong. She pressed the tip down, drew a shaky line—then smudged it with her thumb. Again. Again. Nothing looked right. Nothing felt right.

“I can’t,” she whispered, shutting her sketchbook with a soft thump. “I don’t know how to draw anything anymore.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom in Penang, surrounded by crumpled papers—half-finished trees, crooked birds, flowers that looked more like blobs than blossoms. Her favorite purple pencil, worn down to a nub, lay beside her like a fallen soldier.

Outside, the island hummed with afternoon heat. Cicadas buzzed in the hedges. Somewhere, a motorbike sputtered past. But inside, Nana felt quiet. Too quiet. Like the colors inside her had gone on vacation and forgotten to send a postcard.

Her older brother Eddy knocked once and slid in, balancing two glasses of air bandung—pink, sweet, and swirled with condensed milk. “Still stuck?” he asked, handing her one.

Nana nodded, sipping slowly. The cool sweetness soothed her throat but not her heart.

“You used to draw all the time,” Eddy said, sitting beside her. “Remember? The time you drew Mom’s kebaya so good she thought it was a photo?”

“That was forever ago,” Nana mumbled.

Eddy didn’t argue. He just said, “Maybe you need a different kind of paper.”

Nana frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not paper. Place.” He grinned. “Come on. Let’s go to the Gardens.”

The Penang Botanical Gardens unfolded like a secret the island had been keeping just for them.

They entered through the old wrought-iron gates, where ferns dripped from stone pillars and the air smelled like wet earth and jasmine. Monkeys chattered in the canopy. Butterflies—yellow, blue, orange—danced above the flowerbeds like confetti caught in a breeze.

“Look!” Nana pointed to a giant rain tree, its branches spreading like arms ready to hug the sky. Its leaves shimmered silver-green in the dappled light.

“Told you,” Eddy said. “Nature’s the best artist.”

They met Alexis and Pye near the orchid greenhouse—Alexis, bold and bright in her red sneakers, already snapping photos with her mom’s old camera, and Pye, quiet and careful, sketching a pitcher plant in his notebook.

“You came!” Alexis beamed. “We were waiting. Pye says there’s a new bloom on the Rafflesia patch. It’s huge.”

Nana perked up. “The flower that smells like rotting meat?”

“Exactly!” Pye said, eyes gleaming. “It’s fascinating.”

They followed the winding path uphill, past banana trees with leaves like green sails, past a family of monitor lizards sunbathing on a rock. The higher they climbed, the more the city faded behind them—no cars, no noise, just birdsong and the distant rush of the waterfall.

But when they reached the Rafflesia, it wasn’t open.

Just a tight, leathery bud, wrapped in moss and mystery.

“It’s not ready yet,” Pye said softly.

Nana sighed. “Nothing’s ready.”

Alexis nudged her. “You’re not a flower, Nana. You don’t have to bloom on schedule.”

Nana looked down at her hands. “But I used to love drawing. Now every time I try, it’s like… my hands forget how. Like my brain erased all the pictures.”

“Maybe you’re not erased,” Eddy said. “Maybe you’re just… waiting.”

“For what?”

“For something to remind you.”

They spent the afternoon wandering.

Pye showed them how the giant bamboo grows a foot a day. “It doesn’t rush,” he said. “It just does. Slow at first, then—whoosh—it shoots up. But only when it’s ready.”

Alexis found a spiderweb glistening with dew, each thread perfect, each circle exact. “Nature doesn’t plan,” she said. “It just makes. And it’s still beautiful.”

Nana sat by the waterfall, letting the mist kiss her face. She watched the ferns uncurl—tiny green spirals reaching toward the light. She remembered her art teacher saying, “Growth isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a whisper in the soil.”

She opened her sketchbook.

Not to draw a perfect tree. Not to capture a butterfly mid-flight.

But to draw this—the way the light fell through the leaves, like shattered gold. The way the rocks near the stream looked like sleeping turtles. The way her brother’s shadow stretched long and lazy beside her.

She didn’t worry about lines. She didn’t erase.

She just… drew.

And for the first time in months, it didn’t feel like a battle.

It felt like breathing.

Days passed. Then weeks.

Nana returned to the Gardens again and again—sometimes with Eddy, sometimes with Alexis and Pye, sometimes alone.

She drew the torch ginger flowers, red and fierce like flames. She sketched the strangler fig, wrapping around a dead tree like a green embrace. She even drew the Rafflesia—still closed, still waiting.

And slowly, her drawings changed.

They weren’t perfect. But they were hers.

One morning, she found a note tucked under her door:

Nana—come quick. The Rafflesia. It’s blooming.

She ran.

The flower had opened.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t delicate.

It was huge, a deep red disk veined with yellow, smelling faintly sour, buzzing with flies. It looked ancient. Wild. Unapologetically alive.

“Whoa,” Pye whispered.

“It’s… kind of gross,” Alexis said. Then grinned. “But also kind of amazing.”

Nana sat in front of it, opened her sketchbook, and began to draw.

She drew every bump, every fold, every strange, fleshy petal. She drew the flies. She drew the moss beneath it. She even drew her friends behind her, peering over her shoulder.

When she finished, she didn’t say, Is it good?

She said, “It’s real.”

And that was enough.

At school, Miss Lim announced an art contest: “Draw Something That Grows.”

Most kids drew sunflowers. Or bean sprouts in cups.

Nana submitted her Rafflesia.

It didn’t win first prize.

But it won “Most Honest Artwork”—a ribbon Miss Lim made herself, stitched with green thread and a tiny embroidered leaf.

At the assembly, she said, “Sometimes, the most beautiful things aren’t the prettiest. They’re the ones that grow through the dark. That take their time. That bloom on their own terms.”

Nana looked down at her hands—no longer empty, no longer afraid.

She thought of the Gardens. Of the bamboo. Of the ferns uncurling. Of the Rafflesia, patient and proud.

She thought of herself.

That evening, she returned to the Gardens one last time before sunset.

She sat beneath the rain tree, sketchbook open, pencil moving.

She wasn’t drawing the Rafflesia anymore.

She was drawing herself—small, sitting under a tree, surrounded by flowers, monkeys, friends, and the quiet hum of life.

At the bottom, in tiny letters, she wrote:

“I am growing. I am becoming. I am here.”

And as the sky turned peach and lavender, the first fireflies blinked awake—like stars deciding to dance among the leaves.

Nana smiled.

She wasn’t stuck.

She wasn’t broken.

She was blooming.

Let this story be a seed.
May it take root in young hearts,
and remind them:
You don’t have to be the most colorful flower in the garden.
Just keep growing. 🌱✨