Amaltas, a witness to tale of love

Balvinder

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These days, every morning, while going out in the balcony to collect a copy of a newspaper, the very first sight of a joyfully beaming amaltas tree, standing majestically from the dusky row of roadside trees, splashes such a refreshing radiance that it makes my day. 

It is another story that soon after a hurried look at pages of the newspaper, carrying innumerable stories of inexplicable violence and savagery, makes me quite dispirited. 

However, as they say, “well begun is half done”, the highly refreshing bright yellow boost of amaltas keeps me fresh for the rest of my day. 

 Gratitude for this is due to initial efforts of Dr MS Randhawa, the city’s first Chief Commissioner and a devoted art-loving botanist of great merit, who designed the city’s landscape so well. 

This daily dose of visual delight is not the lone factor that keeps me gay and energetic. It was during these extremely hot days of amaltas bloom, some four decades ago, that I had met my lady love. We used to live in the same lane. Loved each other immensely. But never met till we got married. 

She would invent, almost daily, some or the other task, like that of going to her tailor or a book shop. And the time of such sojourns would always be fixed in the middle of the day, when the city lanes used to be empty with only brightly blooming amaltas remaining a witness to our love. 

While she would hire a rickshaw, I would follow her on a bike, keeping it on the other end of the road. And this daily “dekho” exercise would go on, rather refreshingly, without ever feeling the biting May-June heat that none would bother to measure in degrees then.

When the city’s state Art Akademi invited me to paint, along with a few other city artists, at its open-hand art studios, 

I accepted the invite instantly. 

During this invigorating season of amaltas, could there be a better subject for me than the golden fragrance? Like the proverbial sawan ka andha, who could see nothing but only green, what else can be seen by the one who was blinded by love in this pale season?