My Love Affair with Gulmohar

As I have written here in so many posts, all my childhood memories with Daddy are beyond precious. Him and me shared very little time when I was young because he was posted in another city and me & my mother lived in another small town. He came home on weekends and those two days, Saturday & Sunday, were my days with him. I would accompany him everywhere, wherever he went. To the market, the artillery canteen, to the town on long scooter rides. We would deliberately go around faraway places and then he would stop the scooter by the road where hundreds of Gulmohar trees stood tall, way back in 1995-96, almost twenty years ago.

Dad would make me sit on the scooter and pluck Gulmohar flowers or sometimes he allowed me to stand on the scooter seat and reach for a bent Gulmohar branch. We would then sit for a while watching the vehicles drive past on the road. Back then, vehicles were a few and the roads were often empty. I remember those breezy encounters on Hamara Bajaj towards the mountains. Hot summer days are engraved in my mind with these scenes. Gulmohar trees were like a permanent fixture in the neighborhood gardens and the playgrounds were also lined with them. We would often stop running around the ground to pick up strewn Gulmohar flowers. Us girls would run to our mothers who would be chatting in groups on one of the verandahs, and we would show them our prized possessions in our small palms held too tightly and hence, wilted. What joyful, innocent days! That India seemed like a different place.

Every time I traveled in long bus rides to visit my grandmother who lived a few hours away, I would rest my chin on the window and take in the hot breeze. My eyes would hungrily look for the flaming red against the soothing blue skies. I would count the number of Gulmohar trees I had encountered from the bus and keep a record of it in a little homemade diary made by my Dad. He always punched a few loose pages and gave it to me to record whatever I felt like while at school or home. That habit is still very much prevalent even today. Despite, diaries and spiral notebooks, me and Dad still carry a bunch of sheets stapled together. It's something that I consider as a good habit. I never run out of paper in any case.

Since I have grown up, I now document Gulmohar trees wherever I go. Each new city that I visit or old places that I revisit, thanks to cell phone cameras, I quickly take a few shots from various angles. I am always surprised but mostly happy to discover the different aspects of Gulmohar. Each photograph from various cities showed a different Gulmohar. Somewhere it was too tall and straight branched, somewhere it had a large spread, somewhere it seemed skinny with the flowers bunched at the top of the leaves cover. I don't know if this is just my perception or the trees really are different at all these places. The Gulmohar in Gardens seem very daunting and unreachable, like the ones at Joseph Baptista Garden. Although the branches reach out along the slope of the garden, one doesn't feel like plucking those flowers. Perhaps, we've wired our brains in not plucking garden flowers. These days, there are hardly any Gulmohar trees seen along roadsides. I had a chance to visit my Dad's hometown in 2013. We went to his old school. That seemed like a proper school with its huge playground and trees lined along the boundary walls. Just as we came towards the back of the playground, I spotted a lone yet brilliant red Gulmohar standing tall casting a huge shade. I quickly ran to embrace the tree. How happy I felt then! That was the most memorable moment of our visit. Oh! What I would give to see a burst of such red amidst the dull, grey urbanscapes that we call cities! Gulmohar gives me boundless joy and a pleasant longing for the old days. It's like a time travel trigger. This is one love affair I shall never part with. :) :)