Delhiwale: Capital’s love affair with semal

Celebrating the season with readers.

Unidentifiable the rest of the year, semal trees suddenly become as noticeable as the cotton candy hawkers in Kinari Bazaar, catching our eye as we carry on with our daily commute in the Metro or the auto. Here are some photos of semal’s springtime blossoms sighted across Delhi and the National Capital Region. Dear reader, you too can send us one striking image of a semal flower (or tree) clicked by you. We’d love to share it in the newspaper. Feel free to send a 100-word musing with the picture! Send a mail to htmetrodesk@hindustantimes.com.

Every year, a beautiful semal in Sundar Nursery steals at least some of the thunder of the Lakkarwala Burj monument, as well as of the rose garden facing it, as well as of the glorious sunset that unfolds every evening just behind this monument.

Fatima Begum lives on the pavement with three-year-old daughter, Ifra, near the Subz Burj monument. On post-Holi evenings, she likes to watch the blossoming semal tree inside the monument complex. “My ammi cooks dishes using these flowers,” she said.

The BSES customer care office at Hazrat Nizamuddin West looks unremarkable for most of the year. But the place turns red every year in March due to its large semal tree, with flowers dropping on the roof, the tin shades, and the grounds; (left) sociology professor Kiran Bhushi’s second floor apartment at Khel Gaon is right under the branches of a luscious semal.

The colour of their water thermos and of the fallen semal flower is purely coincidental, insist the owners of the pavement bookstall at Connaught Place, next to the Jeevan Bharati building.