The bitter cold is over. The coolness now is pleasant. It’s springtime in Delhi. The sun is warm and welcome, and the breeze is sweet. The flowers are blooming bright and beautiful. And I’m on a nostalgia trip. Each day my school bus went around the roundabouts, more than half a dozen of them, on way to school and back home. And I watched these roundabouts that were most beautiful, maintained very neatly, worthy of great appreciation and successful at making me happy, for they became a floral flourish in springtime.
Flowers that bloomed in oh-so-many shades and hues, in attractive colour combinations and with splashes and streaks of contrasting colour. Rosy pink, bright magenta, dashing purple, pretty blue, rich red, spanking white, golden yellow. That’s just some of the colours. And, of course, the lush leaves and grass, and the chocolatey brown tree trunks. What a colourful array! What a floral mélange! It would really be like a bit of fairyland for my childhood eyes. And it was surprisingly so even as I went to middle school and into teenage. Exams came and exams went and the years passed on but this visual delight remained an attraction through the years. And yes, it was during the annual examinations, during February-March-April, when one was sufficiently instilled with fear and tension that one also got to seeing all this prettification of the roundabouts.
Now that’s a trip down memory’s flowery lane, but then to date New Delhi’s fifty roundabouts, or rotaries, as they are also called, don’t fail to captivate me in springtime as they spring a floral surprise. It’s like a magnificent gift parcel opened out in between all the traffic and the radial tar roads and concrete structures around. Of course, while most roundabouts are an assortment of flowers, some are dedicated to only certain flowers like the Teen Murti roundabout that boasts colourful rose beds. Perhaps attributable to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s love of the flower.
Stock, sweet William, mesembryanthemum, nasturtium, poppy, sweet peas, pansy, marigold, chrysanthemum, dahlia and rose are only some of the springtime floral beauties.
No doubt the flowers in these gardens are Nature’s beauteous and bountiful extravaganza. But then there are also the activities of planting the seeds/saplings, the grafting and the maintenance, the pruning and the staking, that the hard-working gardeners engage in, activities that go unnoticed and unsaid, and the gardeners who go unsung. The gardeners work tirelessly to make these roundabouts what they are.
But then after spring will come the heat, when all the springtime flowers and plants will wilt and wither and die. And that will be the end of all the beautiful seasonal flowers. Just as the pride of India trees which bear attractive purple, magenta flowers post-summer, during the monsoons, turn naked during spring, the bare trunks looking more like sculpted installations of a master sculptor.
Time is ephemeral. And that’s something the pretty springtime flowers share. Just so ephemeral. Yet, lovely while they bloom and dance, sprightly and gleaming! And wonderful to behold!