Akash Mallige

This is the season of the Akash Mallige. Next to the laburnum, about which I have written earlier in Spring, the Akash Mallige is my tree of choice. If you happen to go on a walk and smell a divine, mild scent, at times inhibited by the smoke from vehicular traffic, but otherwise ethereal, look down at the semi-carpet of white flowers and then at the gorgeous tree that reaches for the sky, its flowers bunched downwards, much like a fashionable set of ear-rings. The fragrance always makes me grateful to the social forestry men of Bangalore who, with much perspicacity, planted many of these trees all around the city – indeed five tall ones stand majestically on the pavement in front of my home.

The Akash Mallige flowers twice a year, the monsoon being its piece de resistance. The flowering begins modestly enough and soon the tree is in bloom. Everything about the flower is delicate, its white with a streak of pink, the fragrance of course, the long stem and the almost entreating countenance it wears as you pick it up from the ground. Much to the amusement of passers-by, I select a few fresh flowers for use as an air freshener. If you do this as well, look into the flower before taking it away and you will often see an ant at work on the nectar within. The gentle thing to do then is to leave the flower alone, for food comes before fragrance.

The thing that I wonder about is how Nature can reproduce millions of these flowers with the same amount of fragrance and nectar. Just what kind of quality control is inherent in this system ? I hope we never know the answer, for Mystery adds to divinity.