No sooner had the sun disappeared behind the layers of clouds in the western skies than a strange intoxicating fragrance sneaked into my small, unassuming cottage in Varanasi. The Ganga was hardly about 50 metres from my modest dwelling. The perfume was irresistible, and I immediately set out in search of its source. When I reached under a dense tree about 20 metres away, it seemed as if my whole existence had come to a standstill with a mixed feeling of awe, joy and curiosity. The source of intoxication was precisely there, close to the tree. Or, perhaps the tree itself was the creator of this heady scent!
There it was! The Saptaparni tree (blackboard tree, Alstonia scholaris) with its neonate buds, their faces turned towards the Ganga humming a nascent song for the river. Many a bunch of seven leaves, formed like palms joined together, were paying autumnal veneration to life, holding their newborn buds very tenderly. Saptaparni’s heady fragrance is a prayer; its murmur, a Geetanjali. Its flowers are an unmistakeable sign of the advent of autumn.
Sitting under the Saptaparni, one can either fall in love or write love poems. As the night deepens, the stubborn scent of Saptaparni fills every nook of the room, pushing aside the shutters of the half-open windows. It neither lets you wake up completely nor lets you sleep fitfully. It seemed as if someone had suddenly opened the doors of an overcrowded tavern nearby, and a number of half-empty wine bottles were placed awkwardly on the tables.
The Saptaparni reminds one of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. He wrote parts of Geetanjali under a saptaparni tree. Tagore’s father Maharishi Devendranath Tagore often meditated under the Saptaparni tree. Even today, in Santiniketan, bunches of Saptaparni are given to the students during the annual convocation ceremony.
The name of the tree comes from Sanskrit: it has clusters of seven leaves with flowers growing at the centre. Saptaparni is an evergreen tree. Throughout the year, its greenery keeps staring at you with plentiful goodness, but it reveals the contents of its heart only when autumn is about to arrive. And that too with such innocuous ruthlessness that you will be amazed at how such a huge storehouse of intoxicating, deadly fragrance remained hidden inside an innocent-looking tree and it did not betray even the slightest hint of it for the whole year!
There is a kind of cruelty in its fragrance, primarily because it makes you feel mystically uneasy and astonished. Without knowing it, one’s plight is like that of a musk deer that keeps wandering here and there in search of a perfume hidden inside its own body. One keeps asking people about the smell and its source and when people display their ignorance, one feels all the more frustrated.
Autumn often comes only for Saptaparni, or Saptaparni blooms only to welcome autumn. There is an inexplicable, deep companionship between the two. T.S. Eliot used to say that poems convey something even before they can be understood. Saptaparni has this quality. Whether one knows anything about it or not, it sends its message through willing assistance from a gentle breeze. There would hardly be any flower whose fragrance is so inebriating.
People believe that the tree is inhabited by the paranormal Yakshini or a goddess who attracts people with her fragrance and kills them when they come close. It’s intriguing that the tree has as many lovers as it has enemies. Many people believe that it is a panacea for many an ailment but on the other hand, it is considered very dangerous for asthma patients. Its opponents say that the devil tree is evergreen but even birds do not like to sit on it.
Edinburgh-based botanist C. Alston had first conducted research on this flower and hence its scientific name Alstonia scholaris. Blackboards and slates for children to write on are made from its wood. As a result, it also came to be known as the blackboard tree. It is quite dense and shady and hence acts as a shield for smoke and noise in urban areas.
The Saptaparni trees can be seen in abundance in many cities. Yes, fearing Yakshini, tribal people in villages and forests often do not even pass by it. Because of its powerful smell, people find some supernatural dimension in it. Our irrational minds get strange satisfaction in associating beauty with some meaningless superstitions.
I am now wondering what use is all this knowledge compared to Saptaparni’s colossal beauty and fragrance. I remember a time when I didn’t even know the name of Saptaparni, but I was absorbed in my impatient and inquisitive glee because of her fragrance. I don’t know why I even started asking people about it and collected all this information. As long as she was in the heart, she was more beautiful; now that I know and understand, I feel a little sad. It was more pleasant as something unknown and unfamiliar. There was a quality of sacredness to it. By bringing it into the field of the known, I seem to have stained it.
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