Season’s sights.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Why oh why he never wrote a poem on these two Lodhi Garden trees?

Poet Octavio Paz was a Lodhi Garden loyalist, back in the 1960s when he was posted in our city as Mexico’s ambassador. To be fair to him, he did write a poem titled ‘In the Lodhi Garden,’ but without mentioning the park’s magical twins.

This Seeta-aur-Geeta duo bear bougainvillea flowers throughout the year, but the densest blossoming returns punctually with the departure of winter. This afternoon, the tiny pink flowers are freely detaching themselves from the branches, falling on the ground in slow motion. The flowers smell of… nothing. (Technically speaking, these aren’t flowers, but leaves.)

Whatever, the scentless “leaves” are beginning to bloom across the city. Take the road divider on Aurobindo Marg. A small stretch is aflame with dark red bougainvilleas, summoning the imagery of the Old Testament God appearing to Moses in a burning bush. The Parsi cemetery behind Khan Market has a altitudinous bougainvillea tree towering over a corner, the petals drizzling down all day long upon a stone grave. On sunny days, a tall bougainvillaea in Green Park Market casts a clear reflection on the glass door of a facing café, filling up the hushed interiors with hundreds of pink flowers. On pushing the door, and stepping inside, the illusion vanishes, the flowers instantly transforming into croissants and pepitos. Nearby in Friendship Park, a gigantic pink shrub is arrogantly blocking the view of an adjacent monument—the transgression is most welcome! While a two-storey bungalow in New Friends Colony is too theatrical: the entire façade is draped with bougainvillea vines, making the residence look like a flower-forest of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Another magic-realism spot currently in Delhi has bougainvilleas hitched to books. A thick wavy cluster of pink leans over a stall of used paperbacks at the Sunday Book Bazar in Mahila Haat. Naturally, the browsers at the stall appear like bargain hunters shopping for best-selling bougainvilleas.

Something must also be said for the bougainvilleas blooming unnoticed in dull deserted settings. Far away in Gurugram, a rutty lane in Udyog Vihar has scores of scraggy keekar trees dandruffed with pink and white bougainvilleas.

For comedy’s sake, you ought to visit the garden beside Hauz Khas lake. A lane signage says Bougainvillaea Park—but no bougainvillea anywhere around.

As for the Lodhi Garden’s two bougainvilleas…. here’s a fable on how things change and yet stay unchanged. Exactly a year ago this space had celebrated the city’s bougainvillea explosion sharing a photo of three friends—Tanisha, Ujala, Nikita—lounging beside the aforementioned park trees. The special occasion was Nikita’s birthday. 12 months later, this afternoon, three friends—Japneet, Sreansi, Rupal— are lounging beside the same two trees, which are attired in the same pink bloom. The special occasion is Rupal’s birthday.

Pink, small and punctual

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