City Nature – Amaltas in 2024 Bloom, Around Town
Summer’s gift
[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]
By yellow-and-green autos speeding along the Mathura Road, the heat-stricken citizen is walking wearily, past a deserted bus stop, past a woman selling bottled water, past a… here it is, right beside a “Go slow accident prone area” signboard. This tree in bloom. The Amaltas. See photo.
Shivering feverishly in the light breeze, these golden-yellow flowers have shown up just in time, spotted on the last day of April. Amaltas marks the entry of summertime heatwaves. Use this city guide for a definitive darshan of the tree in blossom.
Stroll along central Delhi’s Hailey Road. The dozens of Amaltas trees here tend to be entirely clothed in flowers. All day long they fall on the pave. Warning: the afternoon’s white heat sometimes make their yellow colour too harsh for the human eyes.
The suprer-rich Amrita Shergil Marg, near Lodhi Gardens, is picturesque throughout the year with its elegant bungalows. In summer, their thunder is stolen by the avenue’s very many Amaltas trees. Driving through the stretch feels like being inside an instagram reel gone overboard with golden-yellow filter.
The small South Delhi Municipal Corporation park in Lajpat Nagar Central Market is blessed with a great number of Amaltas trees. They are excessively productive, getting so dense with flowers that you rarely see the bark of their branches. As if thousands of flowers were miraculously hanging in mid-air.
The car parking ground of Hauz Khas Village has two socially distanced Amaltas trees. Their flowers keep falling steadily and conscientiously, as if they would continue to fall until the end of time.
The bench in central Delhi’s Buddha Jayanti Park, close to a rain shelter, near the garden’s entrance, lies right under an Amaltas tree. During summer, the yellow flowers shower down on the bench and the ground about it, turning the spot into a Sapno ka Switzerland.
Then there’s the posh Amaltas Drive in Gurugram. But hello, this is Gurgawa of the real estate builders. The address is less about Amaltas the tree, and more about “Independent floors… 4 bedroom residences… from 4.5 crore onwards”!
Meanwhile, the aforementioned Amaltas of Mathura Road, beside the “Go slow…” signboard, has the misfortune of having a men’s loo as its neighbour: This afternoon, the flowers are dropping down on the toilet’s wet stinky floor. A citizen enters, his shoes stepping upon the flowers.
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