City Hangout – Chairs, Sunder Nursery Park
Stuff for memories.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The sprawling Sunder Nursery Park is not only renowned for centuries-old edifices and expansive grassy grounds.
This heritage landmark is now beginning to be known for something unusual in a Delhi public park: chairs.
Yes! Introduced a month ago, these elegantly designed metallic chairs are in yellow and green to choose between. Plopping yourself comfortably in a chair offers a panoramic view of the illustrious gardens: the Sunder Burj monument, the graceful 17th century Sunderwala Mahal, the neat amphitheater, the tree clusters, the swings hanging from tree branches and all the dazzling colours glimmering from flowery hedges.
(But, just in case, there’s a coffee kiosk just a few steps away.)
Merely easing yourself into a chair is like a grand extension of one’s very own suburban balcony. Maybe you’ll read for awhile in that book you’ve been carrying around, and then settle deeper into the chair, eyes closed. Infinitely relaxing. This afternoon, restless squirrels are frolicking about the arm rests of these chairs.
As the afternoon lengthens, altering the quality of light, you may get a sense of the chair being like a magic carpet that flew you for a few hours into so very many impressions. Even as you watch the flight of birds every now and then—right now a solitary crow is repeatedly dipping down and rising up, as if playing a bird-version of seesaw.
In fact, some of the very best public gardens in the world offer the comfort of chairs. Such as the celebrated Jardin du Luxembourg garden in Paris with green metallic Fermob chairs so iconic that exact replicas are sold online (see pic 5 below).
Sunder Nursery has only made a start. Maybe a few years from now a park addict will close her eyes and, first thing, muse about the garden’s welcoming chairs.
Sunder’s souvenir
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