Delhi, with all its believed brutality and insensitivity, is kind in its own way. The kindness which has been bestowed on it not by its people but by nature. It does rain but seldom pours, it does shiver but does not frost, and it’s hot but dry sparing the unease caused by muggy weather. It’s free from cyclones, landslides, floods (unless man made), and droughts.
Delhi must not curse nature. It should be thankful. A colleague once told me that on changing residence she started to miss the sound of the cuckoo, which would wake her up every summer morning. “I always cursed her for not allowing me that extra bit of sleep after having come home from the night shift in a newspaper office, but now I miss her. I miss the riot of colours the Gulmohar outside my window would provide,” she had added.
As the country passes through the two-month-long election process and the political parties taking their own time to announce candidates, a reporter who walks down to 24, Akbar Road every afternoon in this scorching summer and then to the residences of senior politicians living in the vicinity – from Tughlaq Road to Teen Murti, finds strength from the green top overhead across the roads.
They must be thanking Delhi for being so kind to the ordinary souls who can’t afford the luxuries of four-wheelers. Such long walks could be fatal in other cities that care less for its inhabitants – leaving it to the mercy of the blazing skies.
The onset of summer in the national Capital comes with the bloom in the Gulmohar trees. As the mercury rises hawkers assemble under these trees with pitchers and water pots for birds. Delhi is known for its scorching summers, but one would love the season for hotter the city, greater the bloom on the Gulmohar trees, which line the avenues. The red flowers of Gulmohar trees in the national Capital are complemented by yellowish florae from Amaltas trees. There are several, however, in the national Capital who miss out on the riot of colours in the city.
It’s not limited just to Lutyens’ Delhi. Cross the walled city and in North Delhi you would find these flowers in the full bloom especially on the Delhi University campus. Such thickly timbered is the campus that its residents squeak at the idea of moving out of their wooded haven. One can start morning with a jog at Kamla Nehru ridge and take a cool evening walk on the lover’s avenue besides the Post-Graduate Women’s hostel.
The old-timers would tell you that many a marriages on the campus were not made in heaven but got arranged while taking a stroll from Gwyer Hall to Central Institute of Education. There are many others who would confess that the pieces from their broken heart lay among the fallen Gulmohars on Chattra Marg of North Campus.
They enjoyed the absolute bliss of being in love probably because they did not have the air-conditioners in their hostel rooms. To beat the heat, they had no option but to take a walk down the wooded avenue. And more often than not you would meet somebody. And to meet her regularly, you had to be more regular with your walks.
These walks and talks would sometimes bloom like the red-shot Gulmohar on the green top and sometimes fall on the pavement, dried, broken, and tattered. But those moments will always come back to you whenever you see a Gulmohar in bloom on a hot summer noon.
It’s again Gulmohar time in Delhi, time to reminiscence many a precious moments spent in the shadow of the trees thick with green leaves and red shot flowers.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice