Delhi a la Fleur

(Published in First City magazine, March 2013)

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.

This is the point where I allow you to interject and say, 'Whaddafugg, 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? Okay, 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? What about the kilometres of lush fuscia explosion otherwise known as the bougainvillea, and the heartachingly sexy bed of magenta underneath it? The languorous droop of the bottlebrush, and the pretty petulance of the shaving brush tree. And if you’ve seen the poetry of a single Floss Silk Tree - that was until last month in full, towering February bloom - left with none but one delicate pink flower on a high branch in March, I'd totally believe you if you claim that you’ve been swept and stunned and suddenly inhabited by the ghost of Mir Taqi Mir. 

I'm looking at the innocuous anaar tree that has suddenly made itself visible with 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 Jamrul (four of these trees in quick floral succession make for a sight to behold, from the terrace of Triveni Kala Sangam), the vermillion burst of the gulmohar, the thin-waisted smell of the yellow-mouthed Champa. And in May and June, the miracle of hot loo 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.) And in August, there's the luminescent pile of mogra gajraa to be soaked in wistfully from the car window, 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 this month. 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.

WHAT’S KEEPING THE DILLIWALI SANE

When she’s not gawking at trees while driving and making the Jat fellow in the car behind her scream ‘Ladiej driverrrr!!’? Making an edible garden in her balcony, that’s what. No I’m no tree-hugger yet, but nothing tastes better than a pasta with organic baby spinach you harvested off your balcony 15 mins ago, I tell ya. And no you don’t need to read up gardening manuals or stock up sacks of manure for this. No, you don’t need to monitor them sunrise, noon and sunset. All you need is a few pots - bequeathed by your previous tenants, perhaps. If you want floral inspiration (or have a dog like mine who eats anything in nose-distance), GreenEssence’s balcony planters are ideal, shaped like long troughs in yummy, bright colours.

Then you’d need a few vials of good seeds, preferably organic. Dilliwali bought hers from Beej Bachao Andolan, who regularly puts up stalls at Dilli Haat: they have pahaadi paalak and dhania, matar, rai, methre, matar, cholai, mooli, and even cherry tomatoes, all organic! Some of these are superbly easy to grow, especially the first two. For tips on when to sow, best to post on their Facebook page by the name of Vividhara; Ajay Mahajan and his gang of friends will guide you most enthusiastically.

There are fewer things in the world that produce more pop-pop squeals of hearwarming delight seeing a tiny-tiny bright green sprout appear amidst the chocolate mud, by sheer force of some water, some sun, and some of your loving nazar.

Get messy, get started:

www.facebook.com/Vividhara

http://www.quirkoshop.com/Rectangle_Railing_Planter    

(Swaati Chattopadhyay is a writer, dancer, compulsive analogy-weaver, who has a happily complicated relationship with her frog-in-a-Delhi-well life. There’s nothing she’d love more than a piece of your mind in her inbox, at delusionaldilliwali@gmail.com).