Plurality of seasons
A different spring, by Soham Kacker
Today is the eve of Chinese New Year (as I know it, or Lunar New Year to be more inclusive - it isn’t only Chinese folk who celebrate or mark this occasion). It will be the year of the dragon, said to bring change, transformation, innovation and opportunities. And, according to my latest newsletter from Mimi Kuo Deemer (which I highly recommend - you don’t get bombarded and they are a gift when they land), this year's wood dragon comes with the potential to be regenerative, ushering in courage, confidence, integrity, and benevolent leadership. I sincerely hope and pray for that, because of course there are potential downsides too but I’ll leave it to Mimi’s newsletter to explain those.
The Lunar New Year is also commonly known as Spring Festival and is the biggest and most important event in the Chinese calendar. Unlike our usual four seasons in the Gregorian calendar, the Chinese calendar is divided into twenty four solar terms (or seasons), and it starts with the Beginning of Spring on the lunar new year (which this year will be tomorrow, 10th February). In ancient times, this calendar guided agricultural production and people’s daily lives. At this start of spring people would make offerings and prayers for a good harvest and good fortune for the upcoming year.
I find it interesting, this alternative date marking the end of winter and the beginning of spring. It always seems a long way from what we understand here in the UK as spring - be it meteorologically, astronomically or horticulturally. And I think it helps to tune me into a different feeling, a richer level of perception, noticing and naming something that I might brush over otherwise. I think it’s a sense that the wildlife around me instinctively knows too because there’s a tangibly different atmosphere out there in my garden. Yes, there might still be cold weather in store for us yet, but it feels palpable to me that there is a shift out there. So with this as a backdrop I was so fascinated to read today’s piece by Soham Kacker on the different seasons in India. How rich the variety and subtleties of life. How glorious that there are many springs for us to celebrate. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.
Gong Hei Fat Choy to you all for the year of the wood dragon ahead.
A different spring, by Soham Kacker
सुखा: प्रदोषा दिवसाश्च रम्या:
सर्वं प्रिये चारुतरं वसन्ते
“All that breathes, or moves, or blossoms,
Is sweeter, my love, in spring…”
(Ritusamhāra, 6.2)
It is spring in New Delhi, the gardens are a riot of colour. The most precocious are the cockscombs, their plumes of crimson, orange and yellow held proudly over rather lanky foliage. A sea of cape marguerites, snapdragons, larkspur and stock intermingle in larger gardens, pierced every so often by spires of hollyhocks very much reminiscent of an English cottage garden. Petunias and verbenas overflow from hanging baskets, and the obligatory orange marigolds fill terracotta pots which line the driveways of city houses large and small. At horticultural shows, ardent urban growers gather to measure up their chrysanthemums and, while the results are being tallied, exchange tips and tricks with an air of genial reservedness. In recent years, the municipal horticultural department has even started importing thousands of tulips from the Netherlands – pre-chilled and raring to bloom in Delhi’s not-so-cool winter. There is no question – spring (and the short winter which precedes it) is the season for flowers in Delhi.
In his poem the Ritusamhāra, translated sometimes as “The Pageant of the Seasons”, the 4th/5th century Sanskrit poet Kālīdāsa also refers to a kusumamāsa, or “flower month” (RS 6.27) – for him too, the most exuberant time of year is Spring, or Vasanta in Sanskrit. But our spring in Delhi today, and Kālīdāsa’s spring is different – he clearly names the month of the year which he refers to: Chaitra (RS 6.24). In Gregorian terms, this corresponds with late March and April. While today Delhi looks resplendent from November through mid-February, by mid-March the hollyhock’s have gone to seed, the snapdragons look more wilted with each day, and even the hardiest begonias and petunias are struggling (in vain) against the rising temperatures. Our spring is decidedly over, yet Kālīdāsa’s seems to be just beginning. Why this difference?
There are many possible reasons. Kālīdāsa wrote in Northern India in supposedly a similar climate, so simply differing geography is not a satisfactory explanation. Perhaps seasonality has changed since the 5th century – global warming brings an earlier spring? While climate change is far from illusory, a shift of as much as three months is unlikely. Perhaps this particular poet got it wrong – poetic liberty and all that? A closer look at Kālīdāsa’s entire opus reveals him as an astute naturalist – not a single flower in his works, whether used as metaphor, background or ornament, blooms out of place or out of season. Then what is it? Well to start, one can look at the structure of the Ritusamhāra – it reads like a lavishly narrated almanac detailing a year in the natural world, but it divides the year into six, not the typical four seasons. Kālīdāsa uses the traditional Hindu calendar whose twelve months correspond to six seasons – vasanta, grīśma, varśā, śarad, hémanta, and śiśira – spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, early winter, and winter. So the flower-filled ‘spring’ of Delhi is in fact, Kālīdāsa’s winter – and for Kālīdāsa there is little of botanical interest apart from rice and sugarcane patiently ripening in the fields.
The other factor of great importance is that Kālīdāsa writes of an entirely different flora – a flora indica, and not a flora indica var. brittanica. He describes a wild flora as compared to the cultivated gardens of New Delhi, but nevertheless, the plants in his verses seem to follow a different temporal rhythm. Sydney Percy-Lancaster, an Englishman who held the title of the last Superintendent of Horticultural Operations for the imperial government in India (and perhaps the man to have the most lasting legacy on Indian horticulture as a whole) writes of January in Delhi - “…the flower gardens will be attractive for most of the annuals will be in flower.” He goes on to observe phlox, alyssum, African daisies, petunias, salvias and cornflowers in the annual herbaceous border of his own Delhi garden. In 1949, Percy-Lancaster wrote a bulletin catered to the aristocratic housewives of Delhi, instructing them on planting and tending a garden in the challenging climate of the city. Several of the plants prized by him are still favourites in gardens today. In February he writes: “the month of Basant (the spring festival) brings us the only short spring that we know”. And by March, “with the absence of really cold temperatures […] it is doubtful whether the flower gardens will last as they usually do.”
Meanwhile, Kālīdāsa’s spring is heralded by mango blossoms, aśoka flowers, karnikaras (Erythrina sp.) worn behind the ears, and palāśa branches clawing the sky with their crescent-shaped petals. All of these are later flowering, reaching their peak only as the months begin to warm. Similarly, in the heat of summer when even the botanically minded of us struggle to find interest in the landscape or in the garden, Kālīdāsa writes – “may you pass your summer where lotus and lily lift their heads in the pools, and the flowering pātala (Stereospermum chelonoides) scents the air…(RS 1.28)” He mentions salmalī (Bombax ceiba) trees ablaze with red blooms, and arjuna flowers adorning the cheeks of lovers. The autumn, which we now associate with warm tones, vibrant, celebratory hues (on account of the many Hindu festivals in the season), Kālīdāsa associates with white, and his canto on the season opens – “Behold! The Lady Autumn comes clad in silver kāsa (Saccharum spontaneum) blooms…” What Kālīdāsa calls flowers are in fact the seeds of this iconic grass which covers much of the Gangetic floodplain with feathery seed heads in autumn. He goes on to describe the deliciously scented white flowers of Saptacchada (Alstonia scholaris); the graceful vining tendrils of Mālatī (Aganosma heynei); the tiny galaxies of Shefalikā (Nyctanthes arbor-tristis); and branches bursting with white Bauhinia buds.
It would seem that contemporary perceptions of the seasons are quite different from earlier interpretations, at least those represented by one botanically-minded poet. Does this matter; why does this matter? I find myself questioning whether the gradual, reliable turn of the seasons isn’t a unifying experience globally – something which all cultures converge upon. Any gardener will tell you that gardening makes you far more attuned to the weather – to the seasonality inherent even within a week, or a month. Seasonality forms the core of our connection with nature – it brings anticipation, curiosity, renewal, hope. After all, the natural processes of plants are symptoms of the changing seasons – and often this connection is so close that we intertwine the temporal and the botanical – it becomes mango-season; or pārījata-season; or aśokā-season. Kālīdāsa described the seasons as a celebration of the abundance and enchantment of the plants he saw around him – it presented a way of connecting with the landscape, of weaving it into the everyday and the mundane. Yet an association of the seasons with the cultivated is to manipulate the landscape to serve a purpose – to maximise flowering, or yield, or aesthetic effect. In essence, Kālīdāsa’s spring is a wild spring, whereas Percy-Lancasters is a horticultural-spring. The problem with conflating the two is that more often than not, the one that drops out of our common consciousness is the wild. In India, seeing as most of our horticulture is a legacy of the British, this can often lead to an erosion of our connect with our direct, indigenous surroundings. When the link between the botanical and the temporal is severed, it adds to our sense of separation .
The outcome of this observation is not a call for some sort of botanical patriotism – that only that which is native is good. My own Delhi garden is often overflowing with imports from far and wide – including several of the plants Percy-Lancaster himself recommended. Nor is my meaning all that is foreign is bad – Percy-Lancaster wrote fondly of India, and chose to stay back after Independence, making Delhi his home. He also encouraged his readers to go out to the forests of the Ridge to seek out flowering trees and seasonal specialities of the Indian landscape. Yet we perhaps must attune ourselves to inherent biases, and change our registers of observation. Beyond seeking out the bright petunias to deck our gardens, we must also seek out the demure aśokā blossoms hiding in the dark foliage – for both are harbingers of spring. The idea is not to replace one spring with the other, but rather to acknowledge and celebrate the two.
Further Reading
Kālīdāsa. Ritusamhara : Or The Pageant of the Seasons. Translated by R.S. Pandit, National Information & Publications, 1947.
Lancaster, Alick Percy, and Laeeq Futehally. The Sahib’s Manual for the Mali: Everyday Gardening in India. Permanent Black, 2011.
Rao, Desiraju Hanumanta. Ritusamhara (Online Sanskrit Text Source), sanskritdocuments.org/sites/giirvaani/giirvaani/rs/rs_intro.htm. Accessed 26 Jan. 2024.
Soham Kacker is a postgraduate student at the University of Oxford, focusing on plant ecology and conservation. He has apprenticed at two botanical gardens in India, and is interested in the intersection of plant science, literature, culture and history.
Soham is being paid for this article.