Spring is the thing with… semal!. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] To be a flower is a profound responsibility. The cyclic return to bloom gives our unstable world a sense of consoling predictability. It is thus a relief to break the news that the semal blossom is back. A pulpy red semal flower was sighted on Friday evening .It lay fallen under a Khan Market semal. And this unusually warm Sunday noon, the semal tree beside the ITO crossing is glowing in a festive bloom. As if some happy soul had flung holi’s laal gulal up in the sunny air. Semal’s blossoming marks Delhi’s super-brief spring. It is among the city’s 252 tree species (bechara New York has only 130). Most

Let here be light. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Do you take note of shaam ka twilight sky when the sun has gone but the light has not? Aaj ka din (today!) is an idyllic occasion to celebrate some select places in the megapolis that look divine under the evening’s fleeting light. Make your way to any of the three foot over- bridges that span the multi-lane avenue in Gurugram’s DLF Cybercity. At this moment, the sky is pink, stained so by the light of the sun that had set moments ago behind a bunch of Millennium City high-rises. Indeed, the top half of one tower is virtually ablaze in that same pink. In Hauz Khas Village, the monument-facing rooms of

Pink tour. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] It must be 5 o’clock, for a translucent gold light has again filled up the vast Lodhi Garden. The evening sun must be setting behind the centuries-old Sheesh Gumbad. The debut stars of the moment, however, are two trees standing by a walking track. Barely noticeable during the rest of the year, the trees are dressed in pink. The five-petaled flowers of floss-silk have started to show up across the city. Today we take these trees for granted, but when India became free in 1947, the big wide Delhi did not have even one floss-silk. A native of South America, the tree is also known as Mexican Silk Cotton. It was brought to

Delhi's seasonal illumination. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Leaves are slowly swaying in the mild breeze; people are walking with heads down. Such are the shadows falling on the roadside wall of tree-lined Kasturba Gandhi Marg. Caressed by the setting sun’s lukewarm light, the opaqueness of the painted bricks has been replaced by a strange iridescence, making the shadows look as clear as Matisse’s famous cut-outs. This happens every evening. But the phenomenon becomes more compelling at this time of the year--in and around October. The summer and monsoon are over, the deep winter is still to set in, and Dilli’s air is relatively free of smog. All these conditions unite to give the city a peculiar October light, which, at the

Season's guest. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] Look at the photo. You’ll see a few familiar Delhi high-rises, and a tree dense with leaves. Look more concentratedly, and you might with some difficulty spot a few clustery flowers hanging like miniature chandeliers amid the invasive leaves. These are the year’s fresh saptaparnis, here at the B Block in Connaught Place’s Inner Circle, a flower’s throw from gate no. 1 exit of the underground Rajiv Chowk metro station. Saptaparnis are sighted across Delhi and its surrounding regions. A tree stands close to Gurugram railway station, not far from a small wayside temple. An unusually tall saptaparni guards a dusty service lane in Ghaziabad’s Vasundhara, sandwiched between a gym and a jhuggi. A

The other river. [Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi] On googling for it, the first search result is of a military base, along with news links to events in Bangladesh—Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country, her flight landing at the aforementioned base. Hindon Air Force Station is next door to Delhi, in zila Ghaziabad, and takes its name from the region’s lesser-known river. This is because the Hindon is overshadowed by the Yamuna. To many Delhiwale, even the great Yamuna is experienced merely as a bottleneck to be endured during the long commutes. (For a long time, the poetic term ‘Yamuna-paar’ was abused by ignorant snobs to refer to what they imagine was the less posh side of the city, across