Tome And Plume: Bhopal’s Princess Dark-Red Rose Second To None

Naye daur ke naye khwaab hain, Naye mausamon ke ghulaab hain. Ye mohabbaton ke chirag hain, Inhe nafraton ki hawa na de – Bashir Badr

Poet Bashir Badr compares the new dreams of the new era with fresh roses of the new weather through these lines. He says each rose is a lamp of love, and let us not snuff them out with the gust of hatred. The word 'rose' or 'ghulaab' is in abundance in the works of Urdu poets from Bhopal. The city has earned a name across the country because of its high-quality roses.

Now that two weeks of the new year have passed and the rosy young spring is hiding behind the veil of the morning mist, often trying to smile with an angel’s grace, most of the gardens in the city are full of rose and marigold blossoms.

This is the time when the blossoming gardens in Bhopal welcome visitors and buzzing honeybees.

But the portrayal of the city’s landscape remains colourless without talking about Rose. Because the best-quality roses in the country grow in Bhopal, people visiting a park in this month of the year find stately flowers in different shades and sizes.  

The city’s climatic and soil conditions are conducive to rose cultivation. The climate in winter when roses grow is not as chilly as it is in other state capitals in northern India.

The black soil provides a natural condition for roses, and once irrigated, the soil remains moistened for several days. Thus, it creates the right conditions for it to grow and not to fade fast.

In any garden, the dark-red roses shine like vivacious images on light-coloured canvases. Likewise, a light-coloured rose, especially a white one, called White Meidiland, is elegant as well as soothing under the tender sunlight of winter.

Still, one cannot afford to be oblivious of White Dawn, a climber with a pleasant scent that purifies the morning air, but the city’s real beauty is the dark-red rose, called by the endearing sobriquet Princess. 

During the summer, when the city is seethed in extreme heat, the rose growers take special care of the plants. Such conditions, however, exist for nearly two months, but a few raindrops in the meantime take the edge off the heat.

There is a maxim that a rose is as soft as a princess because it cannot withstand the harsh weather conditions. Thus, the temperatures it requires should vary from 15°C to 30°C. If the temperatures are above 30°C, the gardener provides a green shed for the plants.

The residents of the city are proud of several spots with rose displays, and the Rose Garden adjacent to Chinar Park is one of them. The Vardhaman Park near the Upper Lake is also full of rose blooms these days. There are other parks, too, where roses are grown.

The city surrounded by the lakes, forests, and hills offers a cool ambience that is also apt for rose cultivation. This is the reason why the shades and sizes of the roses grown in Bhopal are different from those of other cities. But Desi roses, smaller in size, bloom throughout the year. Their colour is either stark white or light pink.

Rose plants require nearly six to seven hours of sunlight in winter, especially in the morning, and the city is blessed with the mellow sunshine throughout the winter. For this reason, when Haryana, Punjab, and Lucknow struggle for sunlight in winters, Bhopal basks in it.

Dark-red and deep yellow-blush roses offer a delightful sight under the soft winter sunlight, and a few drops of dew on their petals may give an ecstatic vision of Mother Nature, reminding a viewer of Robert Burns:

O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody that’s sweetly played in tune.