of becoming.

the word metaphor sounds like a butterfly to me. it's difficult to explain.. may be it's something to do with Marathi, because 'butterfly' is called fulpakharu in marathi and the pronunciation is like opening up something with your fingers. like unfolding a cool object made of paper. anyway, this is not about metaphors.

So, i had heard that caterpillars become butterflies. they go into cocoons and become butterflies! in marathi the itchy caterpillars are called 'Surwanta' they're furry and your hands itch really badly if you touch them, and they're really slow. 'Ali' on the other hand (is the green worm in green peas.) is much faster and cold and you can touch it. it feels like a very soft but cold lip of some sort. i used to find them very adorable to be frank. (and it's not because of my pretentious sensitivity.)
i also liked butterflies a lot. my father used to get me this plastic packet full of tiny butterflies made of some papers. very colourful. i used to empty the entire pack out of our balcony and watch them swirl. quite a few times we had real butterflies fly into our home on the third floor. My mother used to say they've come here to die. because most of them would be really tired and our cats would eventually eat them anyway. but there were the really vivid ones. ones which had a substantial body and comparitively smaller wings. The kind that does not stick its wings together when it perches, insteads holds them down like an aeroplane. i recently found out that those ones are called moths.
look at the difference : 'butterfly' and 'moth'

anyway, i liked them too. but most of them would be really sick and tired and even if i tried to protect them from my cats, they'd refuse to fly. most of them when they were really old, would have a reddish bulge on their backs. without any fur. quite smooth. they ran but couldn't fly much.
ofcourse i had tried to pluck wings off some of them sometimes but i didn't enjoy that and felt very bad for doing it so i didn't do it much. instead i'd try to keep them out of reach of our cats. my very sensitive arts teacher aunt had told me that it was a great idea to keep their wings in the notebooks. i thought that was a ghastly idea. (this same aunt who teaches poetry to children, also had procured a bunny's tail once for me and preserved a wing of a sparrow my cat once killed. she used to read poems to me and i used to love them! i still remember our lazy afternoons over 'aathvanitlya kavita'. but i didn't like this dead animal body parts storage.)

anyway, so those bulgy moths. i never thought they were beautiful, but i always thought they were sick and needed help.

once or twice i had tried to make butterflies myself. i had learnt that you can put a worm 'Ali' in an empty matchbox put some food and holes in the matchbox and wait till it makes a cocoon.
my previous attempts were not exactly successful. once the Ali mysteriously disappeared. i still don't know how.
once i found this really meaty ali but when i touched it it stuck out two big red horns and began to stink. i got scared and threw it away. ( i later found out that those stinkers and the itchy ones become the most beautiful butterflies.)
the third time however, i found a nice big ali in our kadhipatta. i put her in the matchbox and put some corriander and other green vegetables for her to eat. though the ali didn't eat much, she began to become brown and hard . i waited for weeks then i realised it was not a cocoon. the ali had died and it had hardened and changed colours.
i didn't try much after that.
but i still had empty matchboxes.
so after a few years, i tried again. i found an ali in peas so i put her in the matchbox, and kept peas for her there. she ate the peas like a hog, i had to give her peas all the time. she shat like anything in the matchbox, i cleaned that too.
soon she formed what looked like a cocoon. but i wasn't sure coz the cocoon was substantially smaller than the ali. so i probed a little. i touched the cocoon quite often. but once i was sure it was really a cocoon, i decided to quit it.
but it was taking too long to become a butterfly. and i had had this image of a nice BIG black butterfly with white patterns on the wings and the kind that sticks its wigs together when it perches. the beautiful kind.
after a few days, i had kept the matchbox open and i was probing the cocoon, just to check whether it was still alive, it made some movements. it began to crack and an insect did come out. it had very small brown wings. it hopped onto the window and began to open its wings. the wings were folded and rounded, but when it sat on the window, it began unfolding them. it had become a brown moth. the wings were forming right in front of me. i had expected this to be a beautiful event, but somehow it was very sad. it's mostly because it was a very ugly moth, improperly formed, and i didn't like it. it flew away. didn't even turn back. it was big one though. i looked at the broken cocoon. and tried to smile. succeeded to fake happiness. i jumped about and told everyone that it had become such a beautiful butterfly and i saw it come out and fly away. i acted brilliantly and everybody believed me. but secretly i blamed myself. i thought had i not touched its cocoon and not probed it, it would have become a nice big butterfly. it was my fault that it had become that ugly thing that flew away.
it had hurt me very deeply and i was acting ecstatic. holding on to the brown cocoon in the matchbox.

my aunt suggested i should preserve it.

the next afternoon, when i was alone, i burnt it.