The name of the rose

A ROSE by any other name, would smell as sweet,’ declared Shakespeare’s Juliet. Illustrating the intrinsic worthiness of Romeo, who belonged to a family feuding with Juliet’s clan, the metaphor serves to highlight the arbitrary nature of language, because the rose could have been named differently.

Juliet’s ‘prescience’ (foreknowledge) is admirable because fragrances distilled from rose petals are now bought by innumerable perfumeries and sold under different brands all over the world.

Gertrude Stein’s observation that ‘a rose is a rose is a rose’ emphasises that the rose has an unmistakeable identity and evokes a certain set of associations that have now become specific to it as a universally familiar flower. Despite such classification, complexities abound. Red roses represent love while white roses represent innocence. Juliet compares Romeo to a rose while Elton John’s song eulogises the late princess Diana as the English Rose. Roses, however, weren’t always English in origin. History tells us that along with tulips, they arrived in England as gifts from the Ottoman Empire and were subsequently appropriated.  

The attention that roses command often leads us to ignore other flowers. Thomas Gray observed: ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air.’ New Delhi’s colourful roundabouts and parks ensure that thousands of flowers bloom in spring, acknowledging Wordsworth’s claim that ‘the meanest flower that blows, can give rise to thoughts’ and feelings of an intense nature.

Flowers abound en route to the airport, in pots, on terraces and lawns in public spaces and in private homes and on trees and shrubs. With many names and multiple colours, flowers represent beauty and distinct possibilities for pollination, honey, decoration, adornment, adoration, mourning and celebration. Children, youth, beauty and evanescence are all associated with flowers. The word ‘bloom’ functions as both verb and noun, pretty much like the word ‘rose’ (past tense of rise). 

A late bloomer is applied not merely to flowering plants that take long to bloom. It also refers to delayed achievement of potential in the case of young people. ‘Blooming’ (adverb), often used interchangeably with blossoming, refers to the opening up of buds into flowers. A ‘blooming idiot’ indicates high levels of idiocy. Blooming in many instances is also used in lieu of ‘bloody’ or ‘very’,  as in: ‘It is blooming hot weather.’

‘Bloomers’ were used to describe old-fashioned female underwear comprising loose fitting knickers gathered at the knee. ‘Bloomer’ also refers to an embarrassing or silly mistake in speech. Introducing Gandhiji as Mohanlal instead of Mohandas is an instance of a ‘bloomer’ reportedly made by PM Modi while addressing an international audience. 

Where flowers grow, weeds tend to follow. When this metaphor of flowers and weeds is extended to human groups, we discover that the freedom of expression and creativity is curtailed in the presence of cankerous (erosive plant disease) weeds. Adept gardeners are an urgent requirement, to keep the weeds at bay and ensure that myriads of flowers will bloom and blossom.