India - Delhi Gardens, public spaces, private lives (137 images)

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Delhi is rarely thought of as a city of great natural beauty.

It is a city of immigrants, change and not at all associated with quiet and gardens.

Unless you know where to look.

Actually this and all the previous cities of Delhi have had extraordinary links with
gardens and green spaces and relationships with nature endure in some of the most
surprising places. I see gardens not just in the manicured lawns of Rashtrapati
Bhawan...
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Delhi is rarely thought of as a city of great natural beauty.

It is a city of immigrants, change and not at all associated with quiet and gardens.

Unless you know where to look.

Actually this and all the previous cities of Delhi have had extraordinary links with
gardens and green spaces and relationships with nature endure in some of the most
surprising places. I see gardens not just in the manicured lawns of Rashtrapati
Bhawan but also in the slums of the poor, in the garlands at the shrines of the gods
and in the flowers in women's hair.

These gardens - these greens spaces - are a pause in the city allowing a dialogue
between what Delhi was, what it is and its ever changing people. Every migrant that
comes shoe-less to Nizamuddin station from Bihar to build the new 'Shining
India' brings with him the memory of the quiet of the fields of his village. His garland
offering at a shrine is his planted garden in affluent South Delhi and those memories
build what Delhi is becoming as a city.

The classic Hindu texts
have passages that describe and recommend gardens and their layout. Islam has
always had a fascination with the garden and Delhi, always a Muslim city at heart,
has many fine examples of Mughal gardens.
New Delhi, an imperial British creation, had at its inception wide open boulevards
surrounded by gardens and canals paying homage to
colonial control by dominating the public space. All now thoroughly Indian-ised,
chaotic but still functional.

Plants and trees are cultivated in the most bizarre places: at the edge of motorways
and between illegally built structures, people tend to gardens of all descriptions. Even in the grimmest colony, it is not unusual for people to grow flowers or medicinal
plants.

The New Delhi Municipal Council maintains 1107
acres of greenery.
In a conservative city that has little privacy, parks are
quiet corners where lovers can meet.

Public spaces, private lives.

©Stuart Freedman 2009
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