Delhiwale: This is where that song lives

Lodhi Gardens and the famous Lata track

A true artist never dies. Singer Lata Mangeshkar, who recently passed away, continues to be an integral part of our daily life. Multiple generations of Hindi film heroines have lip-synced to her timeless renditions while dancing about flowers and trees. Those songs lie entrenched in our bones - as well as in those of our parents, and their parents.

The walkways are separated by broad hedges. Each hedge contains a colony of socially distanced tulips.

One of the ways in which you may offer tribute to this beloved icon is to drop by at a little enclosure in central Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens. It is officially called Butterfly Park. Here, you will hear no song of hers, but you will feel the spirit of all the Lata Mangeshkar songs. This is a tiny pond around which hundreds of multi-coloured tulips are presently in full bloom. On landing into the place, the eyes might instinctively search for Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha, whom we fondly remember lying amid the flowers, singing “Dekha ek khwab” — the much-loved sequence from the 1981 film Silsila in which the two actors performed to the playback of Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. That song was famously filmed among tulips, but those were tulips of distant Netherlands. These tulips are of our Delhi.

The enclosure lies like a whisper in a corner of the sprawling Lodhi Gardens. This evening, the rest of the park is packed with Sunday picnickers. Not many seem to be aware of the existence of these exquisite tulips. Their sight is so rare and beautiful, and their beauty so indescribable, that it cannot be captured in words or photos.

Around the garden’s shapely pond, walkways look like a pilgrims’ route circumambulating a shrine. The walkways are separated by broad hedges. Each hedge contains a colony of socially distanced tulips. The hedge closest to the pond has red tulips. The next hedge has tulips in yellow. The third one has white tulips. The fourth, orange ones. You may occasionally spot a black sheep among the same-coloured tulips, like a white flower standing defiantly amid a mob of yellow.

The tulips’ leaves are entwined together, as if they are hiding love letters. Some seem slightly withered, their petals hanging down lamely — the flaws fill their beauty with poignant fragility.

“These tulips are very delicate. If you hurt them, even unintentionally, they’ll collapse, at once,” warns garden staffer Mukesh Tyagi. He has been deployed to make sure that visitors don’t damage the flowers. Graciously agreeing to a request, he sits down among the tulips for a portrait. The flowers bloomed in November, he says, and will keep their bloom until mid-March.

PS: A senior park official confirms that the tulips were introduced into the garden two years ago, with species imported from the Netherlands, thereby making them the descendants of Silsila’s tulips.