They are gone as suddenly as they bloomed, three lakh tulips. Newspaper reports in city pages tell us they were imported in December of 2023 from the Netherlands, each bulb costing Rs 25-30. They were then stored in the conservatory in the Lodhi Gardens, where history and current India meet. Then the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Development Authority took over the planting arrangements. It couldn’t have easy to introduce plants that came in from the cold in eight different colours to the dry, dusty climate of New Delhi.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Apparently the experiment worked well and whole beds of multicoloured tulips bloomed along Shanti Path, around the gol chakkars and in patches in select public parks. Once they were in bloom and in the news, millions came to see them. Ah, the colours splashed across the Shanti Path, the abode of diplomats and diplomacy. Visiting the area in early spring, I found many visitors reliving the romance of old songs from the Hindi films of B.R. Chopra, one of the first to shoot his films in the Netherlands.
The gardener working in one flowerbed looked up proudly when complimented. “Badi mehnat maangta hai ye vilayati phool (This foreign flower demands hard work),” he said, adding, “Rang to hai, par khushboo nahin ismein (It is colourful alright, but lacks fragrance).” He assured me they were guarded so well that during their brief and glorious flowering, only one case was registered against a motorcyclist who was caught trying to remove one plant.
These days when political parties and the media are busy creating loud political narratives to counter their opponents’ rotten ‘values’, the word creative has begun to wobble and lurch somewhat. The humble faceless teams of government malis who nurtured these plants and coaxed them into blossoming in a dry, hot, alien land are the truly creative ones. Not the media and the media cells of parties in the electoral fray. To create political narratives and controversies for that ever-hungry monster, 24×7 media, each day once-creative minds now must make an argument of each word that may scuttle and rattle their political targets. Their consumers may suspect they are being deluded, but raised on a diet of images from TikTok and Instagram as they are, many of them seem to believe that space and time must bend to the will of the king and his media, even if temporarily.
So while people see humble desi marigold and rose petals being showered upon the lord and the lord of lords on channel after channel, they say ,’Jai Jai!’ Poor tulips made to bloom in New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave are not for mass adulation, as they have neither fragrance nor tiny colourful petals that can cover the TV screens as the road shows and rituals progress. Tulips at the most serve to highlight New Delhi as a city on par with any European capital. This strange and self-conscious aesthetic perception circumvents Delhi of the days when the Mughals laid gardens to please the five senses with fragrant chameli, champa, madhu malati and raat ki rani shrubs. The British kept them and added their own sweetpeas, daisies, hollyhocks and chrysanthemums to the merry mix.
Today, city folk are roaming the gardens while the spring lasts, among flowers other than tulips. They can still fall in love, sing, picnic and write poetry, propose and go home to seek parental sanctions for marriage. But hordes of cameramen and video makers wait patiently for the lucky ones whose families give them the nod. The photographers do a good business on the side, photographing young couples in intimate poses for their wedding albums amid a riot of colours. Stray tourists smile indulgently as they take photographs of the whole sequence. Soon the summers and elections will arrive together and make a nonsense of it all.
So as the bulbs are being carefully taken in wheelbarrows to the temperature controlled glass house conservatory where they will sleep for a year, the media narrative is turning to ‘Nari Shakti’. The word is a clarion call to all women wanting to be empowered to unite and vote for tradition. Political speeches are raising visions of an enormously powerful race of women whom the political parties are luring with regular cash deposits in their bank accounts. But their primary identities remain those of mothers and sisters in political rallies, where leaders address them as ‘Matao, behenon, betiyon‘. Extra publicity is given to women being allocated party tickets to contest. The way they are showcased after the announcement makes it clear that the patriarchal family will remain the basis and training ground for women who may be inducted into the power pack. Most candidates wear sindoor visibly poking out of the parting upon their foreheads. The attractive and elaborate mangalsutras around women in power highlight their married status. The sari pallus are pinned to perfection. The imaging makes it obvious they shall have a tolerance and a high desire for strong “top down” leadership. To display their gratitude, most will touch the feet of their political mentors publicly, raise party slogans with full throated abandon but never question any subsequent decisions by the all-male handlers of party men and women.
A look at the present lists of selected candidates is disappointing. At the moment according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union list, India is at number 144 (out of 185 countries) in terms of female participation in parliament. The BJP so far has fielded 66 (17%) women candidates, an improvement on its 2014 tally of 38. Trinmool Comgress has 12, and initial lists from the Congress suggest that so far on 12% of their candidates are women. Obviously when the women’s reservation Bill is rolled out, all parties will need to scrape and scrounge the bottoms of their barrels where women workers have been salted away. But they will see when the time comes how to induct more of the compliant ones and tar those who raise uncomfortable questions. The corporates are doing better, with about 20% women on their boards. But a lot of the women are genetically related to the pool of corporate families and have inherited the space. They are publicly supportive of right-wing tax policies; as media owners most women seem to favour exercising direct control and censorship on their editorial employees; and many who own food businesses endorse India’s curious caste-based dietary stigmatisation of nonvegetarians and their segregation from the vegetarians.
What about lucky women wage workers outside this charmed circle? There are new ordinances and tweaked media laws so thick on the ground that one can be entrapped any day and hauled behind bars (like the chief ministers of Jharkhand and Delhi). So citizens and media men and women all must live with a sense of guilt, growing weaker and weaker. Religion, indolent idiocy and a mob of young with no jobs or alternatives: can there be a more combustible combination? First they degraded those who people elected, then the institutions that guarded centres and professions that created values. Then came paid news followed by fake news and deep fake visuals. Almost no one, by now, knows or feels they can judge anything.
Like tulips on Shanti Path, at the moment one feels nothing beautiful can last amid such cultural barbarism for long.
The self defence of our soil in the plains and mountains and rivers in the hills has been made dysfunctional by human greed and spurred further by global warming. So mass migrations from villages to cities, and from cities to other countries, are the only certainties in our uncertain times. India’s languages, left behind like discarded baggage by original users, have long ceased to be a mirror for real human situations. Embellish them any which way you will, by turning after tulips to Bollywood and cricket.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
Tulips in New Delhi
9
0
31.03.2024
They are gone as suddenly as they bloomed, three lakh tulips. Newspaper reports in city pages tell us they were imported in December of 2023 from the Netherlands, each bulb costing Rs 25-30. They were then stored in the conservatory in the Lodhi Gardens, where history and current India meet. Then the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Development Authority took over the planting arrangements. It couldn’t have easy to introduce plants that came in from the cold in eight different colours to the dry, dusty climate of New Delhi.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Apparently the experiment worked well and whole beds of multicoloured tulips bloomed along Shanti Path, around the gol chakkars and in patches in select public parks. Once they were in bloom and in the news, millions came to see them. Ah, the colours splashed across the Shanti Path, the abode of diplomats and diplomacy. Visiting the area in early spring, I found many visitors reliving the romance of old songs from the Hindi films of B.R. Chopra, one of the first to shoot his films in the Netherlands.
The gardener working in one flowerbed looked up proudly when complimented. “Badi mehnat maangta hai ye vilayati phool (This foreign flower demands hard work),” he said, adding, “Rang to hai, par khushboo nahin ismein (It is colourful alright, but lacks fragrance).” He assured me they were guarded so well that during their brief and glorious flowering, only one case was registered against a motorcyclist who was caught trying to remove one plant.
These days when political parties and the media are busy creating loud political narratives to counter their opponents’ rotten ‘values’, the word creative has begun to wobble and lurch somewhat. The humble faceless teams of government malis who nurtured these plants and coaxed them into blossoming in a dry, hot, alien land are the truly creative ones. Not the media and the media cells of parties in the electoral fray. To create political narratives and controversies for that ever-hungry........
© The Wire
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Rami G Khouri
Nikkei Editorial
