:: Shekhar Bhatia

The season of joy

Shekhar Bhatia

Oct.09 : In the backyard of our house is a small tree that flowers around this time of the year. It’s an ordinary looking tree, with serrated leaves and rough grey bark. What I like about it is its flowering pattern: it blooms for just about two months in the year — between October, when winter is just about to set in, and early December. And it blooms only at night, and sheds its flowers at sunrise.

We know it is in full bloom from the divine fragrance that fills the air at night, more delicate than the smell of the other queen of the night, Raat ki Rani, which flowers in summer. At the crack of dawn there is a stunning carpet of hundreds of tiny white flowers with saffron stems under the tree.

Its botanical name is Nyctanthes Arbor-Tristis — Nyctanthes for night flower and Arbor-Tristis, which I believe means the sad tree. Perhaps that’s why it is often called the Tree of Sorrow. I find its other names far more poetic: Harsinghar, Shephalika, Shiuli, Parijaat and Pavazha Malli. Some call it Night Jasmine.

The Tree of Sorrow is fairly common in this part of the world. In India it is considered a sacred tree and planted around temples. They say Harsinghar is the only flower that is picked from the ground and offered to Gods.

In Hindu mythology, Lord Krishna brought the tree to earth from heaven. When his wives — Rukmini and Satyabhama — saw the flower, each wanted the tree in her garden. So Krishna planted it in Satyabhama’s courtyard in a way that when it bloomed, the flowers fell in Rukmini’s garden.

My favourite story is the one about the beautiful princess Parijaat who falls in love with the Sun God. When the Sun God deserted her she put a curse on him and killed herself. From her ashes grew a tree that bloomed only at night, and shed its beautiful flowers so that the Sun could never see her in bloom again.

I call it my winter tree. It tells me that winter is around the corner. When I see the first Harsinghar flower on the grass (it’s about a week early this year) I know it is time to prepare our little patch of green for winter flowers. It’s a ritual that I enjoy.

I don’t like a structured garden with plants arranged in neat lines. Mine is part zen and part jungle. There are no colour schemes. At least that is the intention when I prepare the soil for the season, create beds and plant the seeds and the saplings. The more exotic — and expensive — bulbs are put into planters they call kishtis (for their rectangular boat shape). And then you wait in suspense. Every morning I look at the beds and the pots, feel the soil if it is too dry — or too wet.

Some years ago, when I started gardening as a hobby, a friend gave me a copy of The Gardener’s Year, a classic by the Czech author Karel Capeck. Capek (who incidentally coined the word "robot") was a novelist, a playwright, and also a passionate gardener. His book, which he wrote in 1930s, is as much about the garden as the simple the joys of gardening. It’s a little more than a hundred pages and every time I look at the row of beds in my garden for signs of life, for a tiny bit of green emerging out of the soil, I remember his lines: "It is a law of nature that either not one of the seeds will grow, or the whole lot".

There is as much joy in seeing the seeds sprout as in watching flowers coming into full bloom. If the seeds or the bulbs don’t sprout, you blame the weather. Either the winter is too severe, or it’s too warm. Or you blame it on unseasonal rains or even global warming. You never know what goes on beneath the surface. "This sprouting and shooting, these germs, shoots, and sprouts, are the greatest wonder of nature", writes Capek.

And when they sprout, there is even more suspense. Is there too much sun, or too little? Do they need more, or less water? The hardy ones on the ground are the survivors. They know how to look after themselves. The hibernating oxalis and nasturtiums resurface on their own. But the exotic ones — the tulips, the iris and the Oriental lilies — are temperamental. I have given up on them, and yet every year I end up spending good money in planting these bulbs.

The friend who gave me The Gardener’s Year has gone far into his passion. I am still an amateur. "A real gardener can stick a bit of leaf in the ground and any plant will grow out of it, while we laymen nurse the seedlings, water them, breathe on them, feed them with horn or baby powder; and finally they droop somehow and shrivel away". That sums up my story.

But you never give up gardening because you like the entire process; you enjoy the anxiety of a gardener. You wake up in the morning and look at your plants. Every year you hope that this year will be better than last, that your iris and narcissus will bloom. And when they do, there is no greater joy.

Shekhar Bhatia can be contacted at shekhar.bhatia@gmail.com