Skip to main content

Gulmohar in Bloom

The entrance

A school usually looks like a haunted place when there are no students on the campus.  It's all the more so when it comes to a residential school with a fairly big campus.

My students have left for their summer vacation.  And I work in a residential school.  With a fairly large campus.  In the capital of the largest democracy in the world.

Drive along
I used to consider myself lucky to be working in such a school.  But can such a school continue in NCR (National Capital Region)?  As a school?

Isn't the land worth much more than the returns to be gained from a school?  Even the parking lot in the city gives much more returns in terms of money!  What else matters?  So why not convert the campus into a parking lot, for example?

Or a star hotel?  Or something equivalent to that for the people who matter?  If an entrepreneur is tempted by this campus, no one would be surprised.

What about an ashram?  Wow!  A swami would be tempted too.

It's a tempting campus.  I'm not advertising my school, by the way.  Just recording something. For posterity.

Home of the Parrots

I have always been fascinated by the greenery on the campus.  And now the gulmohars are in bloom.  The green parrots used to sing in them till a few weeks back.  Where did they go?

Did they go on a vacation too?

But the red of the gulmohars keep fascinating me.

I was recording them this morning.

For memory's sake.

For posterity's sake.

Destined to be mere echoes of hollowness?

Some things have to be recorded.  Because they are going to be history.  They may be going to give way to parking lots.  Or to echoes of hollow words resounding in man-made wildernesses.

When I was clicking these photos, one of the sweepers who has not lost his job yet asked me, "Why didn't you come a few minutes ago?  You would have seen the dogs weeping."

I didn't understand him.  I'm no fan of Maneka Gandhi.  I don't love animals except from far.

"The dogs were weeping," he said.  "For those people whose jobs were terminated when the school closed yesterday..."

I understood what he wanted to say.  I can afford to admire the beauty of the gulmohars.  Do I know the meaning of their red flowers?





Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. R Niranjan DasMay 13, 2013 at 9:10 PM

    Those are some lovely blooming captures.

    http://rajniranjandas.blogspot.in/2013/05/haziness.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. ArchanaMay 13, 2013 at 9:38 PM

    Beautiful pictures. Even I am fascinated by gul mohars

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMay 13, 2013 at 10:43 PM

    we used to have these amazing trees yellow and red huge in number in Kolkata .. now they are not so common !! Nice Post !

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeevanMay 13, 2013 at 11:33 PM

    Please leave the campus as it is. They are the lungs of the city.

    ReplyDelete
  5. RaghavMay 14, 2013 at 7:22 AM

    Now we know what teachers do and think behind the students :-) Lovely post.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Richa SinghMay 14, 2013 at 10:26 AM

    I have gooseflesh.... I actually do. You write with such simplicity and yet the depth is as deep as the reader. Highly beautiful the pictures of course but I wud accept that I preferred the writing more :)

    www.subzeroricha.blogspot.in

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousMay 14, 2013 at 10:35 AM

    Same pinch! Red was our theme. That is a lovely campus - green, red and all. It should remain so - as a school.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownMay 14, 2013 at 11:05 AM

    Awwww what an emotional touch to gulmohar, the fiery trees fascinate me as well , you will often find mention of flamboyant(trees) in my poetry .

    ReplyDelete
  9. D.NambiarMay 14, 2013 at 11:09 AM

    Too bad the kids weren't around to enjoy these flowers in the campus. Long live this school.

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownMay 14, 2013 at 11:36 AM

    Heard that Radha Swami Satsang has taken over the school's admin. I can well imagine the repercussions.
    Nice pics though.

    ReplyDelete
  11. indu chhibberMay 14, 2013 at 6:05 PM

    Which school is this T.M?
    Recently i visited my old school Lady Irwin & was i glad that it's grounds had not been encroached upon?Such lovely gardens we had & it was there only that i came to know the names of various flowers.Sadly,there were no flowers over there this time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 14, 2013 at 6:09 PM

      Which school, you want to know, Indu? Didn't Abhinav above tell us that it's a school in Delhi taken over by Radha Swami Satsang? and he is correct.

      It's Sawan Public School, named after the founder of the Radha Swami Satsang.

      Has any institution lived up to the dreams of the founder?

      Delete
  12. JiggyasaMay 14, 2013 at 8:08 PM

    I am so fascinated with Gulmohar trees ever since my childhood, that the moment I saw your post, I dropped by your blog. But Your story has a different sense all together. There are just the blooming Gulmohar trees left in your campus...rest everything has turned gloomy :(

    ReplyDelete
  13. The MukhtiarsMay 14, 2013 at 9:04 PM

    Lovely Captures,

    ReplyDelete
  14. JeetMay 15, 2013 at 10:24 AM

    What a beautiful place it is. For me it is heaven.

    http://jitendravaswani.wordpress.com/

    ReplyDelete
  15. jahidMay 15, 2013 at 4:02 PM

    Beautiful pictures sir,reminds me of my old home where I enjoyed my childhood days.

    ReplyDelete
  16. SurajitRayMay 21, 2013 at 10:48 PM

    Beautiful ... :), now I can FEEL the song "Gulmohar Gar Tumhara Naam Hota ...". We call that Krishnachura in Bengali.

    ReplyDelete
  17. wingsMay 26, 2013 at 7:00 PM

    "Or to echoes of hollow words resounding in man-made wildernesses."
    Radha Swamy Swahaa!!!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
25 comments
Read more