Mango tango

The liquid-lute-like call of orioles heralds mango blossom season in the city. The forest too is aflame with Palash, and the fields awash with golden mustard.

"It's time to bring home pitchers brimming with flowers," says a famous verse that the ill-starred 'Last Moghul', Bahadur Shah Zafar, composed but that is often attributed to Hazrat Amir Khusrau.

A variety of flowers adorn the door of Khwaja Nizamuddin Aulia, the Sufi master, says Zafar, who composed the song under the pen name, Ashak-rang.

The song ends with the plaint that years have passed but the Khwaja who promised to come ina moment, has still not returned! Meanwhile, the great cycle of seasons continues to revolve like an invisible machine: mangoes blossom and orioles arrive with seemingly uncanny precision, as do festivals such asEid al-Kabir.

One such occasion has been immortalised in a12-part panorama painted by Sir Thomas Metcalfe, the East India Co's agentat Bahadur Shah Zafar's court in 1843. It shows the Emperor seated on his royal elephant returning with his heirs and relatives in procession after offering Eid prayers.

Barely a decade later, Bahadur Shah Zafar lost his throne in the abortive bid for independence.

In another verse describing his fall, Zafar called himself "the ruined harvest of the parched skies ( Jo chaman Khijrse ujad gaya, mein usi ki fasl-bahar hoon)."

But nothing, except perhaps Time, endures forever: within a century, the Sun also set on the British Empire. Yet, the Earth revolves around the Sun, creating the ebb and rise of seasons: orioles arrive and mangoes blossom, as they always have.