Author Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar on Bollywood’s penchant for floral metaphors

Roses rule in Hindi film songs, maybe because roses are seen as a symbol of love. But other flowers too, can express love

A still from Rajnigandha (1974) that celebrates the idea of permanence

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I think it happened somewhere outdoors, perhaps on a walk, with friends, when we passed by a tree that someone identified as kachnar. Mountain ebony. Immediately someone from the group said, “Kachchi kali kachnar ki todi nahi jaati.” You don’t snap the bud of mountain-ebony flower. Soon, someone proffered a rejoinder as well, “Ek baar hui jo dosti todi nahi jaati.” Friendship, once forged, is not broken.

The remark and the rejoinder was not lost on the rest of us who had grown up on a steady diet of Bollywood in the 1990s. I remember the summer of 1996 in Jharkhand’s Moubhandar, the industrial township where I grew up. In the heat and dust of a small town, summers were not exactly a thing of romance. The unyielding sun made you prisoners indoors. But, thanks to cable TV — which in our small-town parlance became “dish connection” — and Bollywood, summers did become bearable. But back to the summer of kachnars and the year that summer came to me through Hindi film songs and its love of flower metaphors.

“Kachchi kali kachnar ki todi nahi jaati” is the opening line of a song from Waqt Hamara Hai (1993), written by Sameer, and sung by Asha Bhosle and Kumar Sanu. I marvelled at how random objects – a flower, in our case – reminded us of songs we had grown up with. But then, I argued with myself, that could be because kachnar was an unusual song for Hindi films which were usually replete with references to the gulaab or rose. Take for instance when Preeti Sagar crooned Harindranath Chattopadhyay’s words, “My heart is beating, keeps on repeating”, in Julie (1975), she sang, “my heart encloses a pot of roses”. Not a pot of jasmines or marigolds.

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Roses rule, at least in Hindi film songs. And maybe because roses are seen as a symbol of love. But there are other emotions too, no? And other flowers that could be used to express love?

No wonder kachnar drew our attention and, for a long time, I was under the impression that perhaps the kachnar song from Waqt Hamara Hai was the only time the unsung flower was commemorated in Hindi films.

But there was one more kachnar song – a song about the kachchi kali of kachnar – in a Hindi film Hungama (1971), which went “Kachchi kali kachnar ki kya samjhegi baatein pyar ki?” What will the young bud of the mountain ebony know about words of love? Written by Anjaan, the song was sung by Manna Dey and Asha Bhosle. Was it just a coincidence that Sameer, who is Anjaan’s son, would, 20 years later, write the next kachnar song for a Hindi film, and that that too would be sung by Asha Bhosle?

If rose was the highpoint of Bollywood romance metaphors, the humble and ubiquitous marigold, too, found place in its pantheons. “Saiyan chhed deve, nanad chutki leve, sasural genda phool…” My groom teases me, while his sister pinches me; the house of my in-laws is like a marigold flower. These are the opening lines of the folksy “Genda phool”, in Rekha Bharadwaj’s voice, in Delhi-6 (2009).

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Also, jasmine. That is, chameli. However, the two Hindi film songs that come to my mind do not speak of chameli as a flower; they speak of Chameli as the name of a person, a woman. The first song is “Mera naam hai Chameli, main hoon maalin albeli” — My name is Chameli, I’m a gardener and quite a beauty — with lyrics by Anand Bakshi, from the film Raja aur Runk(1968). The next chameli song, I remember, was a rage at Saraswati Puja pandals in 2012. “Chikni Chameli”, from the Agneepath remake with a very fearsome Rishi Kapoor. “Mera naam hai Chameli…” is memorable to me for another reason. I can’t keep my mind off its parody, “Mera naam hai Calendar, main to chala kitchen ke andar” — My name is Calendar and inside the kitchen I go — from the 1987 sci-fi flick, Mr. India.

Another unusual flower — or plant — that has been mentioned in at least two Hindi film songs is mahua. Yes, the very useful mahua, which might not be the shayrana type like the gulaab or coquettish like the chameli, but it has its own nasha — both figuratively as well as literally. All thanks to Gulzar for acknowledging mahua in two songs that he has written. The first one, “O babua ye mahua mehekne laga hai” — Look, lad, this mahua flower is fragrant — from Sadma (1983), featuring a dance by the Silk Smitha; and the second, the “mahua mahua mehka mehka” refrain sung by Alka Yagnik in the song, “O re kanchi”, from Santosh Sivan’s ethereal Asoka (2001), which, incidentally, also has the “jhoom chameli” refrain by Suneeta Rao.

It is not everyday that the bitter neem finds its way into a Hindi film song. Unless contrasted against sweet honey, that is. “Kabhi neem neem kabhi shahad shahad…mora piya” — My beloved is sometimes bitter like the neem and sometimes sweet like the honey — in Mehboob’s words and Madhushree’s voice, from Mani Ratnam’s Yuva (2004).

In recent years, with its shift to urban-centric themes, Hindi films seem to have moved away from invoking nature — and flowers — that brought a sense of changing seasons to the story. But here is one more song that refuses to leave the dense rainforest that is my mind, a song by Yogesh from Basu Chatterjee’s 1974 film, Rajnigandha: “Rajnigandha phool tumhare, mehke yoon hi jeewan mein”— My life is fragrant with the tuberoses you gave me. May love find us in all seasons just like this.

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Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s translation of Manoj Rupda’s novel, I Named My Sister Silence, is forthcoming from Westland