तरुवर की छाया

Pradip Kishen's Trees of Delhi is idiosyncratic in its classification and an absorbing ramble through the capital's existing trees. Inspite of its many gardens, Delhi to me (my predominant memories of it date back to the 70s) is thorn scrub. But I also remember the spring flowering of gulmohurs (whose flowers can be eaten) and jacaranda followed by amaltas and copper pods as summer approached.

Flickr hosts a number of pictures of just about everything on earth. The one below is the amalta.



But a picture cannot of course capture the sensation of walking down a cantonment road in summer, the street ablaze with yellow, the sun pouring down your back and then going home to sleep off the afternoon in some cool corner of the house. A Sydney summer is not in the same league.