The Lodhi Garden snowfall

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The snow lay drifted on the park benches and on the clipped hedges, on the spears of the grass, on the tip of the tombs, and along the pebbled paves. It was falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, upon all the living and the dead.

Well, these words are mostly fished out from the celebrated passage of a celebrated story by the great James Joyce. In the short story, the snow was falling all over Ireland. Here, the snow was falling upon Delhi’s Lodhi Garden.

Correction: the snow had fallen only upon one tree in Lodhi Garden.

Further correction: the snow is not really snow. These are white flowers. From a distance, however, the tree indeed appears to be dusted with snow flakes. A park gardener identifies the flowers as tecoma bel creeper, saying that January is its peak time to blossom.

This afternoon, nobody around the tree is gazing at its white flowers, but many of the First January picnickers are lounging on the grassy ground around the tree. A bunch of folks are huddled on a chaadar, alongside a straw basket and a bouquet of red flowers. Steps away, two women are snuggled into their portable garden chairs. One of them is crocheting a sock-like thing out of yellow wool. The women are facing the weak afternoon sun, their backs turned to the flowers. Directly under the tree, two girls (one has a frangipani in her hair) are focusing their phone cameras on a playful squirrel.

Snack hawker Chandan appears from behind the tree, carrying a huge basket filled with crispy papad.

The tree stands on a portion of the park that looks towards the bungalows of Amrita Shergil Marg. It has two trunks. One is straight, the other is twisty. The twisty trunk is coiled around the straight trunk like a snake. Some of the flowers have fallen around the trunks. The limp petals have the soft touch of Dhakai malmal. The flowers bear no smell.

On gazing upwards, and examining the tree’s green foliage, it is easy to discern two kinds of leaves, each entangled into the other. The two entwined trunks must then constitute two separate trees. But it is not so easy to identify just which of the trunks is bearing the white flowers. The foliage nevertheless is weighed down with numerous clusters of long pale white buds, suggesting that the bloom is to continue for some more time.

On walking to the other side of the tree, the viewer discovers an unexpected sight: this part of the tree is totally bare of flowers.