Delhiwale: Autumn’s first look

Traffic is circling the Sabz Burj roundabout on Central Delhi’s Mathura Road

Traffic is circling the Sabz Burj roundabout on Central Delhi’s Mathura Road. Auto-rickshaws clog the road, some people are gathered around an ice-cream cart, and others are walking towards a bazar. Such is this forgettable scene. And suddenly you see it. Above the people and traffic rises a tree almost overtaken by flowers; see photo. Its upper branches hold hundreds of very light green clusters. Nobody is looking up. The ordinary evening is being conducted beneath an extraordinary crowning of saptaparni flowers.

Delhiwale: Autumn’s first look

The saptaparni season is beginning in Delhi. Its flowering marks the end of summer and the rains, and the city’s anrrival into autumn. The change is imperceptible. While we Delhiwale continue to sweat beneath the afternoon sun, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is quietly entering the city. Most saptaparni trees are only starting to flower, but the Mathura Road tree has rushed ahead. It looks like the city’s muscle memory of autumn at its peak, appearing before its time. The abundance does not seem real.

Whatever, the tree draws its name not from its scented flowers but from its leaves. They grow around the stem usually in groups of seven, or sapt. Tiny flowers grow out in bunches at the last point of branches, sometimes resembling broccolis. Native to the sub-Himalayan jungles, apart from other places. saptaparni did not exist in Delhi in the time of the Mughals. It was planted in super-posh Golf Links in the late 1940s, when the colony was laid out, and today is found across the capital region. Some of Delhi’s oldest saptaparnis line Archbishop Makarios Marg, which runs between Golf Links and Delhi Golf Club. Others stand in Lodhi Garden, along the lanes of Vasant Kunj and opposite Gurugram’s Millennium City Centre Metro Station. In Sunder Nursery, one overlooks the park’s lake.

Saptaparni flowering is not coordinated. One tree may be packed with blossoms while another a few steps away may remain totally leafy. The saptaparni at India International Centre, which stands behind the foyer where members of the Capital’s fashionable society step out of chauffeur-driven cars, is yet to show a flower. The tree there stands slightly back from the driveway, sparing its fallen flowers from car tyres, though that perhaps makes little difference. Unlike amaltas or semal flowers, saptaparni flowers reach the ground already broken into powdery bits.

This evening, shoppers are milling through the B Block colonnade in Connaught Place’s Inner Circle. A stall is heaped with mobile covers and tempered glass. A shoe showroom glows behind it, its shelves arranged with sneakers. Only by stepping away and looking up does another scene appear. A tree rises beside the white façade. Among its leaves are small clusters, very light green and easy to miss. This tree has more work to do before it can catch up with the one beside Sabz Burj. It is a saptaparni just beginning to blossom.