Holi season is all about colours. This festival of colours has been defined by a parade of palettes of another kind. The #Virosh vivaah narrative made it a festival of gold, on the one hand. The Rashmika-Vijay wedding spelt a festival of colours that was quite blinding. Gold struck it bold. Big time. Their mythical goddess-meets-god template redefined wedding couture. Rooted in South Indian temple tradition and replete with intricate Rava granulation to deep nakshi carvings, their outing of ornaments made the newlyweds themselves look like sculptures from a South shikhara. The couple’s festival of gold was the talk of the town and Twitterverse, for better and for converse. Move over, Ambanis. Enter, Virosh.
Ga-ga over gold
Tweeple forgot going green at the Ambanis’ emeralds. Twitterverse was going ga-ga and greener at gold. Vijay Deverakonda catapulted himself into social media’s showstopper with his silhouette of a sculpted kshatriya king in sculpture-inspired jewellery. Deverakonda bore a poetic resemblance to a walking-talking gold souk. The heist masterminds at the Louvre Museum wouldn’t have lugged off with as much booty as was mounted on the museum piece that Deverakonda looked like.
From elephant motifs that were emblematic of wisdom to tiger motifs that were a toast to agility, his ceremonial ornaments put all the collective clan emeralds and navratnas of the Ambani weddings to shame.
So what if half of the Tweeple stumbled and stuttered on the pronunciations of Deverakonda’s gold catalogue — oddiyanam to haram, kasu mala to kadukkan to kolusu. You weren’t meant to master the vocabulary, you were only meant to get overboard or overwhelmed at the newest national pastime — ornament ogling.Deverakonda is the new poster boy for My Big Fat Gilt Wedding.
The curious case of nothing succeeds like excess.
Trysts with tulips
On the other hand, it has been a festival of colours courtesy tulips. From Shanti Path to Lodhi Gardens and Talkatora Garden to Amrit Udyan. Time for a tryst with tulips. Poetry on the patios and pavements. Poetry has been pretty partial to tulips as a muse. Emily Dickinson’s personification toasts the tulip thus:
“She slept beneath a tree.
Remembered but by me.
I touched her cradle mute.
She recognised the foot.
Put on her carmine suit.
And see!”
What is heartening is to see the Capital’s tulip sightings scripting a narrative across generations. Really reminiscent of the fabled Sakura sightings of Japan.
Gen X is pottering along the promenades for the nostalgia. Gen Z comes riding on selfie-ism and status update-ism.
Tulips are the Capital’s new cultural bridge of bonding across generations. Ironically, it is this reel culture that is also overshadowing the time out with tulips.
This is summed up best by a gifted voice in contemporary poetry — Malashri Lal — who aesthetically mirrors the smartphone culture in poem “Tulip Garden” from her latest book, “Signing in the Air”:
“The purple tulip struggled to stand straight in the polluted air of Delhi’s winter shrugging off the dust, it mumbled ‘Who brought me here from Amsterdam… the phone was the dominant connect with the tulip fields so new, foreign and enticing. The camera was trained at the tulips…
It’s the human figure standing next who was more important
The selfie stamped with
The purple, yellow, pink and white beauties nodding vaguely in the background.”
chetnakeer@yahoo.com
