TULIPS FROM AMSTERDAM IN DELHI

The second annual Delhi Tulip Festival ended on 21 February. 

My introduction to tulips dates back to the early 1950s when I read a book and heard a couple of songs that named the flower. The book was an Alexandre Dumas novel, "The Black Tulip", a classic story of love, jealousy, misfortune, obsession and revenge in which the hero pursues his dream of producing a black tulip despite being wrongly jailed and is helped in the task by the jailer's daughter who he falls in love with. The book inspired real life flower breeders to cultivate a black tulip and the first that any one came close to producing such a flower was a man called Geert Hageman from a tiny village Oude Niedorp in Holland, who on 18th February 1986, exactly 38 years ago, succeeded in growing one very dark flower and named it 'Paul Scherer', after a mayor in Germany, whose society had aided Hageman in his dogged pursuit.The flower has been preserved and is on display in the Amsterdam Tulip Museum. Paul Scherer tulips are now being grown and are the darkest breed of tulips but darkly purple and not truly black!

Now the songs. The first one was, as far as my memory goes, by 'Little' Rita Faye, so named because she sang the song in her teens. Lyrics of the song I recall distinctly go thus, 'Tulips in the springtime, apples in the fall, I don't care what mama says, I'm gonna marry Paul!'

The second song,"Tulips from Amsterdam" was a happy, romantic number with a promise by the singer to bring the flowers to his loved one in spring all the way from Amsterdam. He goes on,"Like the windmills keep on turning, that's how my heart keeps on yearning, for the day I know we can share these tulips from Amsterdam."

Well, Delhi has been sharing tulips from Amsterdam since 2017 when 18000 bulbs were imported and planted. For the last four years, they have been planted in Shanti Path, Chanakyapuri, and a regular festival organised since last year. This year, as many as 126000 bulbs were imported with some of them planted on different roundabouts in the city such as Teenmurti and Mandi House. The pity is that they only last for about 15 days.

As a kid, I recall inquiring why we do not grow tulips in India and was told that our climate was not suitable. However, Srinagar now has a regular tulip park with 68 varieties of the flower, overlooking the Dal Lake. In Delhi, we had them in many colours, red, orange, pink, purple, dark purple (almost black), white, purple and pink, pink and red, and appropriately timed with this year's Basant Panchmi, yellow. 

Although we immediately associate Holland with tulips, it was interesting to learn that the tulip was a wildflower growing in Central Asia. Turks were the first to cultivate it around 1000 A.D. and a 'Tulip Mania' struck Turkey in the 16th century with the Sultan desiring cultivation of the bloom for his pleasure. The name 'tulip' itself comes from the Turkish word for turban.

Those of us who saw the 1981 hit film 'Silsila' will recall Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha romping among tulips in the Keukenhof gardens in Amsterdam with the romantic song 'Dekha Ek Khwab' and musing at the twists and turns of life with 'Yeh Kahaan Aa Gaye Hum'.