Sunil Sethi: Watch how the flowers fall

AL FRESCO

A press conference was held some days ago in Tokyo by the chief horticulturist and keeper of the city's parks to issue a public apology. Due to uncertain weather conditions, he said, the cherry blossom would not be in complete flower. In Japan, this is tantamount to a national catastrophe. For the sakura not to appear in its full glory is to deprive the city's population of an annual outing that is a pleasure, a ritual and a declared holiday rolled into one. Large sections of the population take to the pavements and parks""especially the ancient specimens planted around the moat of the Imperial Palace""to admire the delicate pale pink flowers as they fall, covering the landscape like drifts of snow.

The Japanese obsession with gardens and flowering vistas came to mind as I drove last week through the Delhi suburb of Noida, where, to my surprise, the public parks, some maintained by the flyover company, were superbly planted and a blaze of colour. Some horticultural genius""may he keep his job forever""had come up with the simple idea of scattering poppy seeds along the central verge of a long highway. Amid all the raw construction of ugly high-rises, that singular line, several kilometres long, of red poppies nodding on slender stems, was a sight that both rested the mind and lifted the heart.

It took me back to a time when Delhi was truly a city of gardens. Its short spring season of four to six weeks in February-March was a celebration of exhibits and garden visits. The Delhi Flower Show was a highlight of the season, patronised by prime ministers. Jawaharlal Nehru and, later, Indira Gandhi for many years made it a point to attend. There was an active Rose Society and a Chrysanthemum Society. Newspapers carried front page notices of the opening of the Mughal Gardens at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Private and public gardeners vied with each other to show off carefully-tended treasures.

The central park in Connaught Place was planted with deep borders of the traditional carmine-coloured, strongly scented Indian tea rose, from which the Empress Nur Jahan is said to have accidentally extracted the attar of roses. (Historians, however, dispute the veracity of this legend; but the word gulab, from the words gul or guldasta, meaning flower and bouquet, respectively, are, like Nur Jahan, Persian in origin.)

Yet one hardly sees the Indian rose anymore, or the poppy, so beloved of the Mughals that the gardens of Kashmir are still covered by it. Even typical English flowers like sweet peas, once the staple of garden trellises in Delhi, have largely disappeared. Who can nowadays be bothered to set up cane trellises and train and trim flowering vines, when one can pop round the corner shop and buy exotic foreign species and new hybrids? The business in flower cultivation and retail is booming but whoever saw these blooms before?

Perhaps nothing changes as fast as the taste in flowers. When conservation architects and gardening experts were replanting the water gardens of Humanyun's Tomb a few years ago, they had difficulty in settling on what precisely the 16th century planting was. Ultimately, they agreed on echoing the tomb's colour scheme of red sandstone and white marble with beds of seasonal red hibiscus and scented jasmine. This simple arrangement works beautifully and is a joy to behold at any time of the year.

Yet flowers are full of deeper meaning""and these vary from place to place. Whereas in Japan the chrysanthemum is venerated as symbol of both monarchy and state, in Italy it is the flower of mourning and death. No Italian home or garden ever holds a chrysanthemum. It is only offered at funerals and graves.

India would be unimaginable without the marigold, jasmine, rose or tuberose. Their colour and fragrance are inextricably tied to the thread of life and death.