Delhi a la Fleur (Or, floral nemesis of my last post, Driving, Delhi, Crazy)

March makes me giddy with mush. I thaw with the weather; my moods stir, yawn and face the shiny sun. And before I know it, the days are suprise-full with moody madness: one moment I'm melting and sighing and throwing innumberable 'awwww!s' at the drop of a hat, the next I'm raging with some kind of inexplicable, phantasmagoric frenzy. It's high wattage, this month. And I am in love with it.


And my city mirrors me this month. Driving through Delhi in March is like winding your way through a Ragamala miniature painting series, in random order. The landscape periodically turns into moodscape; everything is invested with feeling. And if you're lucky enough, the car stereo will mindread and throw up the perfect song to go with the scene.


Okay, I allow you to interject and say, 'Whaddafuck, you live in Mughal Gardens or something? Cuz Delhi is just...grey'. Hmm, it is, but there are little pockets of surprise and colour - you just need to look. (If you're me, that's all you will do, and delete/ spam all the grey bits).
Don't believe me yet? Ok, so have you driven down Race Course Road and met the randomly coloured, big bouncy dahlias at the Ashok hotel roundabout? (I swear, they bob their heads in funky 'yo!' type rhythm). Have you seen the four back-to-back Semul silk-cotton trees at the messiest point of the Naraina nightmare, and rediscovered that particular sensation of 'heart-stopped-for-a-nanosec' at the sight of their lavish, flamboyant display of big, waxy, blood-red flowers? (Last March, with no flyover in sight, this sight would nevertheless make me forget, magically, that my car was bumping over potholes in the exact same way was a tiny boat would bob on choppy seas.) And if you see the poetry of a single Silk Floss Tree in full, towering February bloom (with flowers so pink, so delicate and so heart-implodingly ripe and ready to drop into your lap), left with none but one pink flower on a high branch in March, I'd totally believe you if you claim that you're swept and stunned and suddenly surreally inhabited by the ghost of Mir Taqi Mir.


And of course, the riot otherwise known as the bougainvillea, in full-full show off mode at this time of the year! It helps that I spend most of my day in JNU, which is bursting in a perpetual impressionist fireworks-y display of bougainvillea hedges the size of single-storey buildings. Every day I drive in from the North Gate and try not to bump over the many speedbreakers because my eyes are too busy soaking in the gorgeous-ness of a kilometre of luscious fuchsia, red, and white explosion.

Everyday I remind myself to evolve a graceful way to sweep my jaw off the ground, because that's where I find it after I've taken in the sight of an entire field of wild flowers amidst trees and rocks outside my school. There is the droopy elegance of the bottle brush that despite its ethereal charm looks very much apt for utilitarian purposes (exactly like the brush my mother used to clean bottles, making me wonder which one was named first - the brush or the flower). And there is the pretty petulance of the red powder puff which is so ripe and round and feathery and I'm always tempted to pluck it and feel it against my jaw (which is probably why its other name is the shaving brush tree!). I could be walking innocently to the library, hoping for nothing more than the warm, somewhat attractive-repulsive smell of freshly photocopied notes at the end of the walk, until a huge 20-feet long bougainvillea bush (that was until the other day, absolutely innocuously green and nonchalant), takes hold of me with its heatachingly sexy magenta efflorescence - the kind of beauty that's so sudden and so pretty, the only way you can dignify it with an apt response, is by wanting to eat it. And to make the gravitational forcefield of the bougainvillea even more maddening, is the naturally prepared rani-pink bed of flowers underneath the bush - and now I know exactly why Radha slept with Krishna so readily. A little cove under a low-lying tree grove, with a dense carpet of lusciously coloured flowers. Wanton woman, check.


I'm looking at the anaar tree outside my school and its little budding anarkalis, and smiling away, reminded of that Nasikh poem, dripping with typical fleshy Lucknowi decadence and wit:


I am a lover of breasts

Like pomegranates;

Plant then no other trees

On my grave but these.


I wish I could be as sure as Nasikh about my favourite tree (no no, neatly gendered equivalents don't work here; dreaming of banana trees just isn't as much poetic, or hell, even as much fun). What tree gives me the most sukoon? Which tree would I rather stare at, even in death? I have no bloody clue. I am equally seduced by the March bounty I just described, as I am by the awaited April lavender grace of the Jacaranda (four of these trees in quick floral succession make for a sight to behold, from the terrace of my dance class at Triveni), the vermillion burst of the Gulmohar, the thin-waisted smell of the yellow-mouthed Champa. And in May and June, the miracle of the hot loos making the Amaltas flowers bunches (in a frozen animation of drop-drop-still petals) turn a more ferocious florescent shade of yummy yellow (I have my own secret patch of amaltas heartbreak, on a narrow road called Kama Koti Marg in RK Puram, lined as it is, by about 30 full-blown amaltas trees on both sides.) In August, there's the luminiscent pile of Mogra gajraa to be soaked in wistfully, as I get heady on its surround-smell fragrance and wonder if its reasonably sane to buy the entire pile, stuff into a pillow, and hug it to sleep. And when September ends, it'll bring with it, the faint dhaak sounds of the Durga Puja, heralded by the early morning nippiness that's inseparable from the intoxication of the Harshringar flowers. A haunting fragrance so ironic and short-lived, that it seems apt that its other names are as phonetically brief (parijat, shiuli), as they are poetically infinite (the night jasmine, the tree of sadness).



I can't decide, and I can't bear it, all this floral glory that my moody Delhi is throwing at me in one big rush. So am just going to do what I do to let off the steam, to bleach the love, to sober myself up. I'll drive through a shower of pale yellow dry neem leaves on Aurangzeb Road, nodding at the neem trees leaning-bending in a question mark over the road, letting my whizzing car rake up a mini storm through the voluptuous heaps of dry neem lining the road-side. It's a feeling that's pale and bland and yet alluring, like the faint strains of a half-remembered tune. And it sufficiently brings me back to myself, just so I can steady myself before being blown away by yet another cunniving March flower.
　

Driving, Delhi, Crazy

Everybody loves cribbing about driving in Delhi. I think it builds character.
No? Let me convince you otherwise.

What other life-altering experience can gift you the faculty of psychoanalysis-at-the-speed-of-light, (when you're changing lanes and need to predict car reactions around you)? Can anything challenge your incredible will power control more than that moment when all you want to do in response to those incessant flashing headlights behind you, is show the middle finger in one swift, qiuick, effective gesture? Have you ever experienced the epiphanic rush of The Slow Takeover of Curdling Blood on being overtaken yet again by same uncle you overtook three times already (he be in the spirit of the overtake-then-sleep-then-overtake spirit of the rabbit in the rabbit-tortoise story)? And nothing except Dilli's driving can make you realise the existential, literal ramifications of that classic book, The Trick is to Keep Breathing.

You'd better believe me because I have spent a major part of my dwindling twenties' years on the road (given state of being if you've lived in two extreme corners of the city, as I have). I've made peace with the fact that I live in my car. My car is my suitcase, my disco, my tempo, my dining table, my music room, my dressing mirror. (Ever seen a girl with one kajal-lined eye in the adjacent car, at a traffic light? That must be me. The other eye usually gets lined at the next traffic light, unless it's a rotten bad luck day and all the lights are green.)

One of my friends (also Dilliwali and lover of her gaaddi) once mentioned how her morning drive to work was like being in a videogame. The analogy fits so perfectly, you'd wonder why you hadn't thought it up already. I'm no long-time lover of vid games (being girly-girl ghissu by DNA), but I imagine the adrenaline rush of zipping ahead, the dread and frustration of being on the losing side, the unconscious body movements accompanying the finger swerves, the sheer unbelievability of it all, must be the same as that of a videogame, yes? (No? How would I know. Those are my only reactions while videogaming, which is rather toxic if you consider that I lose every time).

Ok, out with it. Despite the mad hypothesis, there's a small pleasure in thinking that it really is a videogame, right? Doncha just love hitting the steering wheel theatrically when orange light turns red just before you reach the Stop line (and to make things worse, a thulla stands on the other side, typically in statue-thumka pose)? Don't you control, every single day, the urge to run over all of the following :

- The aunty who dangles one foot, a baby and a polythene bag in voluptuous glory from the scooter hurtling at breankneck speed, and dangerously, uncontrollably thrusting its bulging baggage into the side of your car bonnet.
- The driver who just can't decide if he should overtake the car in front of him, making you curse-chant 'Whither, balls?' inwardly.
- The right lane hogger with the frantic red 'L' sign on windscreen, who also makes you want to flash index finger and thumb style 'L is for loser' on your forehead when you catch him spotting you in the rear view mirror.
- The Badan Pe Sitarey Lapetey Huay Pedestrian Aunty who crosses the road like an experiment in solar refraction and temporarily blinds with chakaachaundh roshni.
- The bihari and his casual Am-Crossing-Street-Brake-Now outturned palm gesture at you, who makes you wonder if he'd dance in the middle of road if you jiggle the steering and refuse to slow down.
- The Scooterwale Uncle Who Never Figured Out Indicators. You'd block his sideways moves just for the heck of it. Just because he has a system of doing yoga type neck rotations (centre to left, repeat 10 times instead of pressing left indicator button), doesn't mean you'll follow his code, right?

I meet all of above everyday on my to-and-fro drives. I can smile and type them away as stereotypes in a blogpost, but can I be frank and tell you that they still rattle me? There are still moments when I scream 'Abbe chal naa!' at full volume, knowing well that no one but me is tortured by the rude decibel levels of that holler. I'm still bellowing soundproofed-ly in my car, at The One and a Half Lane driver, the Old Uncle at Wheel of Ancient Fiat, the Can't Go Beyond 50kmph For a Month New Car, the Meandering Bike-wala who Deserves to Be Swatted Like a Fly, the Aunty Who is Mesmerised by Invisible Tip of Her Car Bonnet.

Aunty reminds me; I like using the Dilli road's misogyny well, for some good ol' fashioned rash-driving-misbehavin'. Especially when my look of the day is all gharelu, complete with bindi and sari et al. (The shocked look on the curious overtaken rogue driver as he catches up with me at the traffic light... it's just priceless). Now you'll ask me, 'use misogyny well'... how? Let me count the ways. For one, the average Dilli Driver's misogyny liberates me from the pressures of good driving conduct. Because no matter how well I drive, I will always get that unsaid look from adjacent car's male driver - that look that tells me my entire sisterhood is cursed, that XY chromosome is incapable of cultivating driving skills, that female DNA is programmed to be perpetually in the 'L' state of driving. So I might as well drive rash, brash, hell, positively nutsy. I can just brake randomly (or worse, rhythmically, which I do on Evil Mood days) and scare the bejesus out of the unlucky bugger behind me. I can reverse my car in a way that makes it look completely drunk-possessed. I can be lazy and park terribly unaesthetically, because hey, doncha know I'm a Ladiej Driver?

Driving in Dilli can leave you paralysed for words, or too fatigued to express your bottled rage, or plain incoherent with angst (especially if you're being chased by me on an Evil Mood day). Take this Dilliwali's tip and drop the commas from 'Driving, Delhi, Crazy'. Then you could well be Driving Delhi Crazy. And that's the only survival technique, the one that I can safely say, has let me live to tell the tale.