When the shiuli flowers...

It's time to celebrate the Goddess once again

 

A few months ago, I paid a visit to my favourite nursery in Delhi to pick up some plants for my balcony. Walking through the rows of spring blooms, I came across a plant that looked very familiar indeed. “Yeh shiuli hai, na?” I asked the gardener who was assisting me. “Nahin madam,” he said, shaking his head. “Isko parijaat kehte hain.” I was unconvinced by this explanation. So, I took a picture and uploaded it into an app that helps identify plants. And what do you know? Both of us were right. This plant is called parijaat in north India; but in east India (where I grew up) it is called shiuli. 

 

As a child growing up in Calcutta, I was always told that the shiuli plant was very auspicious because its flowering – which happens only once a year – heralds the beginning of the Pujo season. Every October, without fail, the white and orange blooms of the shiuli tree burst forth, reminding us that the Goddess Durga is on her way and will soon be among us. These teeny-tiny flowers fall from the shiuli tree every night, carpeting the floor and exuding a heavenly fragrance that I have always associated with Pujo festivities.

 

So, even though the parijaat/shiuli available in the nursery were just small potted plants, I decided to take a couple home with me. In a couple of years, I thought to myself, they would grow strong and high and maybe, in time, they would start to flower and remind me of those heady pre-Pujo evenings I remembered from my days in Cal. So, I transplanted them into roomy pots and resigned myself to a long wait.

 

Well, guess what? Just a few months down the line, as October began to rear its head, these small little bushes that I had been watering faithfully began to throw up little buds on their branches. And in a week or so, my plants were redolent with the shiuli blossoms, exuding their trademark perfume and putting me in the right Pujo spirit. Sure, the flowers were tinier than I remembered from the tree in Calcutta, and they wilted far sooner, but for a little baby plant, my shiuli was doing very well in its role as a harbinger of the Goddess.  

 

But while this gladdened my heart, injecting it with a dose of rose-tinted nostalgia for the Durga Pujos past that I had celebrated in the city of my birth, it also left me a little bit sad. And that’s because this year, Pujo will not have the same resonance in Calcutta. By all accounts, everyone is still shattered by the R.G. Kar rape case, and the Pujo spirit has been diluted with both anger and sadness.

 

And while I know that it will be hard to enjoy the festivities quite as we did in the years gone by, the flowering of the shiuli reminded me that the Goddess will keep her appointment with us this Pujo as well. Now, it is up to us to give her the kind of welcome she deserves and to pray that her avenging spirit does right by the young doctor who has, so far, been failed by the system.

 

'Tis the season

Every city has a time when it shines brightest -- and that's the best time to visit

Cities have their good and bad days just as they have their good and bad seasons. And the best way to get the most of your visits is to choose a time when their good days and good seasons coalesce to make for a fabulous experience. 

For instance, you can’t go wrong visiting Calcutta — as I still refer to it, having grown up there — during Durga Puja. There is a particular magic in the air during the Puja season and you can’t help being infected by it. The entire city is shimmering with lights; walking through the streets is to be left awestruck by the inventiveness of the decorations; and the pandals are often works of art in themselves. The idols of the Goddess are stunning and innovative, leaving even nonbelievers in a state of bliss. And that’s before they’ve tasted the bhog. 

Similarly, Goa can cast a spell on the best of us during the monsoons. There is something enchanting about the landscape dominated by varying shades of green, with the foliage wiped clean by the incessant rain. The sea is grey and stormy and this is probably not the best time to swim. But just sitting on the beach and watching the swell of waves can be mesmerising in itself. 

Every city presents its best face during spring but no one does it better than Delhi. This is the season of flowers in the national capital and every roundabout and street is lined with colourful blooms. The weather is just right to visit its many monuments and parks. The worst of the winter pollution has gone but the evenings and mornings are still cool and pleasing. Take a walk in Old Delhi; feast on a picnic in Sunder Nursery; or simply eat some chaat on the streets; you simply can’t go wrong. 

I have my own reasons to pick particular times to visit certain cities. I like to time my visits to Amritsar either around Baisakhi or Diwali because this is the time when the Golden Temple is decked up like a bride, its gold facade lit by thousands of glittering lights. Yes, you spend more time in queues to visit the Darbar Saheb but the view is totally worth the wait. 

That’s much the same reason why I like to visit London during Christmas and New Year. Yes, the days are short and it is dark by 4 pm but the Christmas lights shine all the brighter for that and there is a feeling of festivity in the air that is truly infectious. And there is no better feeling than sitting by a roaring fireplace with a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie while a shimmering Christmas tree looms in front of you. 

Winter is also the season when my thoughts turn to Venice. The first visit I ever made to La Serenissima was in December and I fell in love with the city as I walked the near-empty streets completely free of tourists. Ever since then I have chosen to visit Venice during the off-season to enjoy the city when it is not heaving with the hordes that invade it in summer. I can’t recommend this enough (having suffered the crowds during one ill-judged summer visit) especially since hotels cost far less at this time. 

The spirit of Pujo

It's alive and well; and prospering outside the confines of Calcutta as well

Growing up in Calcutta meant that Pujo was a very special time — even for a true-blue Punjabi family like mine. Yes, my mother sowed a pot with khetri (wheat germ) and we had special pujas every evening in the Navratras and performed Kanjak puja on Ashtami like all devout Punjabis. But we also celebrated the Bengali-style Pujo with equal fervour. As a child I particularly enjoyed getting four sets of new clothes to go pandal-hopping on Shashti, Saptami, Ashtami and Nabami, eating the bhog at different pujos to get a true measure of the culinary delights on offer. 

And then, fate decreed that I had to leave Calcutta and come live and work in Delhi. For many years after I moved, I couldn’t bring myself to celebrate Pujo the same way as I did in Cal. Yes, I knew that there was a sizeable Bengali community in Delhi which celebrated the festival with zest and fervour. But somehow I couldn’t see myself joining the festivities I always associated with Kolkata in a small corner of Delhi that is always Bengal (Chittaranjan Park, of course). So I would content myself with ruminating on Pujas past and promising myself that next year — for sure! — I would go back to Cal for the festival. 

It took me several years to come to the realisation that that was not going to happen. So I did the next best thing. I began attending the Pujos in my immediate neighbourhood in Delhi. These were smaller, more intimate affairs, with many familiar faces, and a genuine sense of community. And I felt that familiar Pujo spirit return to refresh my mind and soul. I soon grew emboldened enough to venture further and attend the larger, more famous Pujos in the capital. And before I knew it, this became an annual ritual. 

This year was different, though. The day the festivities began I was due to travel to Jaipur to attend an event — and who in Rajasthan would be celebrating the Pujos? 

Well, it turned out that a lot of people would be doing just that! As I discovered, there are many as 15 Pujo pandals in Jaipur (reminding me of that old joke: What do you get when three Bengalis get together? Two Pujo Committees!) even though the Bengali community in the city is far from large. 

So it was that on Mahasaptami I managed to recreate my Calcutta memories. I put on a new outfit and headed out with my husband to visit Jaipur’s oldest Durga Pujo pandal in Bani Park. And strangely enough, it was this Pujo that most closely mirrored the Pujos I remembered from my childhood. The pandal was small and compact, the Durga idol was beautiful and serene but not overstylised, the bhog was a simple khichri and tarkari, and the place was overrun by the same kind of Bengali aunties and uncles who used to spoil me when I was a kid. 

Perhaps that explains why, as I stood there, saying a silent prayer to the Goddess, I felt myself retreat to a child-like state of wonder. Or maybe it was just the Devi blessing me with a few moments of grace. 

I would like to think that it was a little bit of both. 

Blooming glory

The Japanese make such a fuss about their Sakura; why don't we do the same with our Chinar, Laburnum and Shiuli?

It has been on my bucket list for the longest time ever: visiting Japan during the Sakura season. It is trickier than it sounds. There is never any guarantee when the Sakura will bloom, though forecasters try their best to nail a period down. And once the Sakura does flower, the cherry blossoms have a very short life expectancy: a week if you are lucky. And the Sakura season itself lasts about a fortnight or so. So, unless you time your visit just right -- and have the luck of the Devil -- it is hard to be sure that you will catch the cherry blossoms at their finest.

Well, I am happy to report that even though I planned my trip last year, I was lucky enough to arrive in Tokyo and Kyoto at peak viewing time. And what a view it was! Sprawling trees of all shape and size overladen with blossoms that went all the way from pristine white to cherry pink, taking in every shade in between for good measure. The Sakura proliferated in the parks, it blossomed on every street corner, it lined the roads in its majestic glory, it even popped up along the rails of the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto and back. It was a sight that will live with me forever.

But what I found even more amazing was how Sakura viewing was a family activity for the Japanese. They even have a name for it: Hanami, which literally means 'flower watching'. And when you do your flower watching at night, it is called Yozakura, which literally translates as 'night Sakura'.

So, as the trees in all the parks in Tokyo and Kyoto bloom, entire families set out with a picnic basket to spend the day under the shade of the cherry blossoms. They lay down their plastic sheets on the green, and settle down to eat, drink and yes (this is Japan after all), use those ubiquitous selfie sticks to take selfies against the backdrop of the blooming Sakura. Not that I can afford to act all superior; I was doing just that as well (though without the obligatory selfie stick).

But as I clicked what turned out to be hundreds of pictures of the cherry blossoms, I couldn't help but wonder why we in India don't celebrate our seasonal marvels with quite the same passion, panache and elegance. It's not as if we don't have the same kind of natural beauty that flashes forth for brief periods to dazzle us before disappearing all too soon. And while we do appreciate it as we go about our everyday life, we don't treat these interludes like an 'event' to be savoured and enjoyed.

Take Kashmir's Chinar, for instance, which changes color to a spectacular russet and then a brilliant crimson in the autumn. The spectacle lasts only for a few weeks before the tree sheds its leaves and shuts down for the winter. This should be as special for us as the Sakura is for the Japanese. And yet, we don't see people from the rest of India descending on Kashmir to view this superb sight. Indeed, it barely registers with most of us, as we wait for the snowfall to descend so that we can plan a winter vacation.

Closer home, in Delhi, the roads and parks come alive in spring with the yellow gleam of the Laburnum (you may also know this as Amaltas) and the bright red of the Semal tree. The flowering period lasts only a few weeks but while it is on it turns the city into a vision of natural beauty. But we hardly spare the blooms a glance before going on about our day. At the most, we click a couple of pictures to upload on social media, but there is none of the overwhelming wonder that the Japanese experience with Sakura.

Sad, isn't it? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we too could engage in a spot of Hanami, taking our kids, our parents, our friends for a day out in the park, to just sit in the shade of a Laburnum or Semal tree and take in their beauty? If we could just lay down a blanket on the grass and bring out a picnic basket, and spend the day marveling at the beauty of nature? (Of course, it would be even better if we could emulate the Japanese in yet another way: in clearing up and carrying back our own garbage, leaving the area as pristine as ever.)

Growing up in Calcutta, I was as excited as the next child about the advent of Puja. But in all that excitement about shopping for new clothes and making plans for pandal-hopping, none of us paid much attention to the flowering Shiuli (it is called Harshringar in north India) which heralds the arrival of the Goddess every year.

The white blooms with a peach/pink centre carpet the floor every morning, spreading their sweet scent through the neighborhood. And then even before you had fully registered their beauty, the Shiuli flowers would vanish, reappearing only the following year as Durga Puja drew near.

The flowering of the Shiuli should have been as special to Bengalis as the flowering of the Sakura is to the Japanese. But I have zero memories of anyone making an almighty fuss about it. Everyone just took its beauty for granted and went on with the festivities. And I can't help but think that we missed a trick there.

Well, the spring is almost gone but how about this Puja, we have a special week of just celebrating the Shiuli in all its colorful and fragrant glory as a precursor to the main festivities. I am pretty sure that Ma Durga would approve.