How a foreigner has the world at its feet (and on its branches) every season

The first vivid scarlet blooms, furry as caterpillars, are out and have already been checked out by dizzy purple sunbirds. Shrill with excitement, decked up to the nines in midnight blue sequins (and scarlet and yellow armpits!), the guys sugar up with nectar, so they can perform their high-octane pop-star gigs for the girls, pumped up with mega-voltage razzmatazz. The girls love it, and more than once, a happy couple has built their little jhuggi-jhopri bag of cobweb in the bougainvillea right next to the tree.

Quieter, more solemn, but jingling musically to each other, the white-eyes have also done the rounds. They’re goggle-eyed serious looking birds, pale yellow and white, smaller than sparrows and whirr like wound-up toys. A white ring around the eye makes them look like they’re wearing monocles and are about to rediscover Penicillin. They’re here for the nectar and blooms, as well as the tiny insects that have been seduced by the sweetness. The tailorbird, that megaphone-voiced tiny-tot, is also not a total sugar-freak and assiduously picks out high-protein spiders and other crispy creepy-crawlies amidst the blooms.

But sugar is the main draw. The formally tuxedoed magpie-robin has already staked a claim to the tree: he practises his recitals from it every morning and evening. It doesn’t make a difference to the sylph- like red-whiskered bulbuls who are at their mellifluous best, straight-backed and proper as palace guardsmen (They will have to watch out for their red-vented thuggish cousins who are always ready for a punch-up). Another visitor (and personal favourite) is the gelled brahminy myna who, with his rolling eye and slick black shendi, belts out so much raw emotion with his song that he would make any girl weep and swoon.

There are sneak thieves too: let the tree properly explode and gangs of parakeets will descend on it. Normally, they make an almighty racket — but not when they’re raiding the bottlebrush (or any tree with bounty). Now, complete radio silence is maintained. Green as the tree’s leaves, they melt into it, vanishing completely. Until you are startled by a bloom that suddenly detaches itself from the tree and takes off! Eh? What’s that? Ah, a long green chilli with a bushy red handlebar moustache attached… umm, that’s enough beer, thank you!

A pair of glossy and hoarse jungle crows turn up suddenly, like hit-men in a mafia film and tug at the leaves for some mysterious reason (soft furnishings for their villas?).

There are others too: garden lizards pretend they’re twigs, sneery and nodding condescendingly as they snap up bees and hoverflies simmering around the blooms. Until, of course, a shikra suddenly drops in on them, talons out, eyes blazing: stopping their hearts and completing the circle of life. Squirrels systematically work the blooms chasing each other away. And then, of course, there are the Rhesus macaques who are like socialites at a book-launch where no wine has been offered and the canapés are passé. And as if their minds are on nobler and deeper things (like how to sneak into the kitchen and break open the fridge). As for the bottlebrush blooms, they’re masticating more outside their mouths than inside; they simply couldn’t be bothered… They spill more than they eat. On the ground below, the harsh-eyed (soft-hearted) jungle babblers sift through the mess, muttering darkly and harshly about ‘swachh Bharat’.

It really is an explosion — and over all too soon. The furry blooms darken and shrivel very quickly after they’ve been dropped. In October, perhaps, the tree will bloom again, hesitantly and very sparingly, causing a lot of confusion amongst the birds. Then as winter arrives, the leaves lose their sheen, look grey and tired, the tree droops sadly, its spindly branches resembling broomstick fronds. Happily, there’s another little bottlebrush in the back garden, which I’ve been told is a ‘Golden Bottlebrush.’ It’s small and delicate, always wears fresh green leaves and it leans over too.

I’m still waiting for the Midas touch

Ranjit Lal is an author, environmentalist and bird watcher

The story appeared in print with the headline Code Red