Day of the dahlias in Mughal Gardens

Photograph by Preeti Verma Lal

When the sun peeps through the stone trellis, the peacocks flounce in fury in the Bio-Diversity Park, the Damusk rose is inebriated with its own scent and the mammoth banyan sits stoic in the sun, you think of Sir Lutyens sense of symmetry, you believe in Dr Kalam's faith in oneness of all beings, you dream of a day when human beings would learn the secret decorum from the plants, you forgive the imperfection of the rowdy creepers and you are tempted to pick the burnished kumquats and stitch them into the rim of your black jacquard poncho.

It is no longer Spring. It is no longer the day of the dahlias. It is almost Summer. It is almost time for the sun to stretch its shimmer on a large canvas in the Mughal Gardens of the Rashtrapati Bhawan. Don't be mistaken, this canvas is neither unbleached hemp nor coarse flax primed for painting; it is 13 acres that make for the gorgeous Garden, the most beautiful sight in Delhi in Spring. Today, the sun looks lazy-probably narcissistic-admiring its rays fall on mute stones and pools the colour of beryl. The lavender dahlias let the breeze flirt with their layered bodice, the phlox sit like disciplined children in tidy rows, the wind-stirred rose boughs are laced with dwarfed hedges, the lichens carelessly write hieroglyphs on stone and the bees drone as if there would be no tomorrow. Wherever you look there are swatches of yellows and pinks and reds and mauves, hemmed by green lawns and handsome trees. In a corner stands a sentry in olive green uniform and an ochre turban guarding the bounties of Nature.

But it did not happen in a day. Not even a year, not two, not one pair of hands, not just a few chips from a marble quarry; it took 3.5 million cubic feet of marble, 700 million bricks and 3,500 men toiling for nearly 17 years to build the Rashtrapati Bhawan. And think about it, the splendour of 340 rooms on 300 acres couldn't dwell on prose; there had to be a garden as an accompaniment to the poise, there had to be colours to set off the dignity of the red sandstones. At least that is what Sir Edwin Lutyens, the British architect mused. Inspired by the gardens in Jammu and Kashmir, the Taj Mahal and Persian and Indian miniature paintings, Lutyens divided the Garden into different parts - the Rectangular Garden, the Long or Purdah Garden and the Circular or Butterfly Garden.

The central garden is contiguous to the main building and is divided into a grid of squares by four channels. It is flanked by terrace gardens and embellished with six lotus shaped fountains that make a valiant effort to scrape the sky with their 12 ft statuesque sandstone contours. But it is the grass beneath your feet that first pulls the aesthetic chords. Called doob, the grass was originally brought from Belvedere Estate, Kolkatta. Just before the monsoon, the entire turf is stripped and pampered with fresh soil. And in three weeks the doob wears its green sheath again. To offset the subtle pea green of the doob, cypress line the pavements and the Bakul, mentioned in Kalidasa's plays and Abul Fazl's Ain-in-Akbari, is pruned to look like mushrooms. According to legend, during the flowering season the Bakul tree craves for liquor to be poured into its roots by virtuous girls. The privilege couldn't have gone to a plebian, so it was the princesses who did the honours.
Guarded by sturdy 12 ft high walls, the Long or Purdah Garden is mainly a rose garden that has nearly 250 varieties of rose sitting in 16 square beds laced with informal borders of hedges. You can find an almost black rose in Bonne Nuit and Oklahoma, while the blues come in Paradise, Blue Moon, and Lady X. If blacks and blues are not what fascinate you, go for a green rose. The roses borrow their names from celebrities- Mother Teresa, Ram Mohun Roy, John F.Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, to name just a few.
The Long Garden runs into the Circular, Sunken or Butterfly Garden that has a bubble fountain concealed in a pool in the centre and is bordered with perennials and seasonals and the lapwings that flutter in gay abandon. As you walk around, you can feel the fragrance of the scarlet geranium cling to the sweet peas that curl around the impromptu lattice.

But much water has flown in the beryl pools since the first flowers bloomed in the Gardens. When Dr APJ Abdul Kalam took over as the President of India, the Mughal Gardens became more than an adornment; it became a means to promote the ancient wisdom of herbs and to prop up the philosophy of spirituality and oneness.

Says S.M. Khan, press secretary to the President, "A patch of barren land was selected for herbal and aromatic plants. The basic premise is to promote the use and export of herbal plants." As soon as three acres were selected for the purpose, the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), The National Medicinal Plant Board, and GB Pant Agriculture University (Pantnagar) chipped in with expertise. Very soon the ground that once was a just a bare appendage to its attractive neighbour was dug, given a fresh layer of soil and tiny saplings of asparagus, brahmi, geranium, jatropha (biodiesel producing plant) aswagandha were arranged in uncluttered strips.

The first Herbal Garden, showcasing 104 herbs, was inaugurated on Gandhi Jayanti in October 2002. It has attracted many a curious farmer, scholarly scientists, eager students and giant pharmaceutical companies. "The Indian farmers traditionally grow only two crops, but if they can intersperse one of these as a third crop it would give them an extra crop and more money," adds Khan.

The success - and perhaps the beauty- of the first Herbal Garden prompted the opening of Herbal Garden II which was inaugurated on Gandhi Jayanti in 2003. The second garden emulates the panache and the philosophy of the first herbal garden.

Since the basic premise of setting up the herbal garden is to promote commercialization of Indian herbs, it was important to rope in the farmers. On March 14 this year the Herbal Gardens were opened exclusively for farmers, with experts helping them with know-how to grow and market these crops. As if that was not enough the President went a step further by planning to gift every visitor to the Mughal Gardens a potted Brahmi plant, which is now touted as the best thing for memory enhancement. This year more than 2 lakh Brahmi plants were gifted to visitors.

There has been a lot of buzz about Herbal Gardens and the Tactile Garden specially laid for the visually impaired. If splendour could find a place to grow on this expanse of loam, so did Spirituality. The idea stemmed from Dr Kalam's belief that people, like plants, can live together in harmony. Spread over 1.5 acres, the Spiritual Garden houses trees and plants mentioned in the scriptures of various religions - ber and ritha (Sikhism), grapes, Star of Bethlehem that flowers once in four years and poinsettias (Christianity), jasmine and pomegranate (Parsis), mango and amla (Jainism), fig, olive, hibiscus, pomegranate (Islam), peepal, tulsi (Hinduism, Bodhi (Buddhism), and lotus pond (Bahai).

"The highlight of the Spiritual Garden is a Trinity- three trees (neem, banyan and peepal) have been planted in one pit and someday they would grow into one tree," says Col. Ashok Kini H., Controller of Household and In-charge of the Spiritual Garden. What might look as an ordinary act of sowing three plants together is actually laden with deeper philosophy- if trees can grow together, why can't human beings? After all, they also grow in the same soil and breathe the same air. And in keeping with this broader view of spirituality, there's just one maali for this Garden. Get the message: There's one god that tends to all of us. That is what Dr Kalam wants every one to believe in.

Carrying that belief as you turn back to the Butterfly garden, you are again enamoured by the swatches of pinks and yellows and magentas. Dr Brahma Singh, Officer on Special Duty, was right when he said that they have to indulge in a lot of "flowering jugglery" to vanquish monotony and to keep the flowers in accomplished perfection.

The Mughal Gardens, including the Herbal, Spiritual and Tactile gardens, can be quite a walk. But when the sun peeps through the stone trellis, the peacocks flounce in fury in the Bio-Diversity Park, the Damusk rose is inebriated with its own scent and the mammoth banyan sits stoic in the sun, you think of Sir Lutyens sense of symmetry, you believe in Dr Kalam's faith in oneness of all beings, you dream of a day when human beings would learn the secret decorum from the plants, you forgive the imperfection of the rowdy creepers and you are tempted to pick the burnished kumquats and stitch them into the rim of your black jacquard poncho.

The Gardens are so beautiful that you look for alibis to stay on. You can find them in glossy kumquats, the chintz on the lilies, the scarlet bracts of the poinsettias and the shadow of a stupefied sun. Or, you can take home Dr Kalam's idea of Spirituality and retrieve the lost happiness of a discordant world.

Published in Swagat magazine, May 2005

Contact: Preeti@deepblueink.com