Knock Your Stalks Off

Trees take root in our stories too.

“I still remember seeing the largest datura flower in my life,” says hand lettering and research-based artist Abhishek Khan, recalling his first walk at the Lalbagh Botanical Garden with the city-based artist and curator Suresh Jayaram. That was seven years ago, when Abhishek was working on a personal project about the oral histories of four cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon and Mumbai; he’d fill the outline of the city’s map with annotations of gathered anecdotes handwritten in calligraphy. Through this project, he discovered that “the green spaces in these cities have intriguing oral accounts” but they’re often told through the lens of humans and “the histories of the plants aren’t largely considered.” He decided to do something about it. In 2023, he created Lalbagh.info, “a citizen-run, free guide for this spectacular garden.”

In the early days of researching the botanical garden for his site, Abhishek joined Suresh Jayaram on several walks in Lalbagh “because he knew the garden very well,” having lived close to it all of his life. Abhishek absorbed this narrative knowledge and then began to explore the botanical garden on his own terms and expanded on his information bank. At first, he made a map that marks out horticultural sections, monuments, and tree avenues of this green space. Second, he made a flower finder. “The garden is huge. Even today, if I’ve not seen the flower but someone tells me about it, I’ll have to literally comb through each section to find it,” he admits. But through his flower finder, anyone can directly navigate to seasonal flowers because it’s been pinned on Google Maps. And thirdly, he’s created a self-guided, free fragrance walk that allows individuals or groups “to experience the fragrances in the garden with a little write-up on the history of the plant.”

Branch manager

Over his years spent in this botanical garden, Abhishek has found “that there are many ways to see and experience Lalbagh” and so, he started curating differently themed walks. “The natural world has been completely erased from our collective stories, instead they’re just about ourselves,” he says. “And I felt like some of these stories about plants need to be told again to weave us back into nature,” he adds. But he wants to do it “from a place of love, pleasure, and yearning” as a counterbalance “to the doomsday climate narratives.” Abhishek wants to “make people fall in love with plants” and the nature around them in the hope that they’ll want to protect it too.

The Lalbagh map, flower finder, and fragrance walk are resources freely available on Abhishek’s website. His other monthly walks cycle through the histories and uses of the 2,150 species of plants in Lalbagh from different angles. On his Botany of Alcohol Walk, he tells the story of some plants as ingredients for intoxicants. “The most obvious one is the Palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer), where the sweet, unfermented tree sap is consumed as toddy. But there’s also the fruit of the African sausage tree (Kigelia africana) with which some Kenya tribes make muratina, a traditional ceremonial alcoholic beverage. But in our botanical books, this fruit is simply considered as toxic; if eaten raw it is, but it is also processed into alcohol,” he explains. “There’s the blue lotus flower (Nymphaea caerulea) [with] which the ancient Egyptians would steep their red wines, and it would give the drinkers a complete body high,” he adds. In a similar vein, he does a Botany of Psychedelics, Botany of Witchcraft, Botany of Ancient Texts, and many more. These differently themed walks are in the service of breaking “the singular narrative around plants and trees,” he hopes.

Trunk tales

Even with these various means of cutting paths through this magnificent garden, he still finds “that there’s still so much” to learn about Lalbagh. Though, he admits, “there are two sides to [the] coin, and familiarity has also bred some amount of contempt,” because it does have its problems. “Like last weekend, I was stopped at the gate with a friend because she was carrying her squash rackets. We clearly explained that we won’t be playing in the garden, and also, it isn’t the kind of sport that can be played outdoors either. They wouldn’t budge,” he explains. “Another time, I learned they’ve got a new rule that you can’t walk anti-clockwise in Lalbagh. How’s anyone supposed to know this? It’s just another form of strict supervision of green spaces like at Cubbon Park.”

But he’s still drawn to Lalbagh, he concedes, because of the flowers like his favourite: the egg magnolia (Magnolia liliifera), which “blooms almost all year around, more common in North East India.” He loves it for its “gorgeous, powerful, potent fragrance” similar to “ripe pineapple” that rushes the nostrils. He generously pointed us in the direction of the Magnolia Lawns, “near the MTR Gate entrance” to find it by nose. Quite quickly, he’s telling us about the diversity in the Plumeria Grove, “where every tree’s flower looks and smells different” or the mango orchard “where there’s a mango that tastes like a guava.” Abhishek hopes to take all of this expansive information and create a book of Lalbagh maps “of different routes to navigate the same garden” based on his ongoing research and monthly walks in the future.

Until it hits the printing presses, you’ve got an open invitation to join him on any of his walks.

The details: Head to Lalbagh.info or DM their Instagram account for updates on future walks. Abhishek will lead a Fragrance & Botany of Psychedelics Walk on Saturday, 25 July starting at 7.30am & two walks on Sunday, 26 July; a Fragrance & Botany of Witchcraft Walk starting at 7.30am, and a Fragrance & Consciousness of Trees Walk starting at 4pm. You can buy your tickets here. Rs 850 for General Public and Rs 450 for Students.