Flowers occupy a special role in Indian culture, history, myth and tradition. From the most elevated space of the sacred to adornment in everyday life, there is a flower for every season, every reason and a special one for the numerous gods and goddesses of Indian religion. Flowers-as offerings during ritual worship to intricate carvings on temple walls, embedded in modern paintings by contemporary artists to colourful carpets for welcoming gods and guests, from fragrant garlands that adorn Indian brides and grooms to aromatic essential oils and perfumes, used as a play of seduction in the Kamasutra-they refresh our spirits and elevate our souls.
Flower Shower explores this integral role that flowers play in our world-as cultural signihers; as motifs in Indian art, architecture, sculpture, literature and textiles; as culinary ingredients and as divine offerings. Discussing a range of topics from botany to aesthetics and history to poetry, the author takes you through an immersive journey, laden with the beauty and perfumes of the exotic, nutritional and decorative role of flowers within Indian tradition and aesthetics.
Deeply insightful and featuring a vast compendium of images, this book traverses the range and depth of Indian culture and transports you on a journey which is part memory, part research, part aesthetics and part lived experience. Come! Immerse yourself in a Flower Shower.
is an art critic, cultural theorist, teacher, curator and author, who has been passionately involved with the world of art for nearly three decades. She has two postgraduate degrees in History and History of Art and a PhD from Panjab University. She was the Head of Department of Fine Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Panjab University, Chandigarh, as well as the Chairperson of the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi. Recipient of the Charles Wallace Award in 1999-2000, she completed her post-doctoral studies in critical art theory from Goldsmith College, University of London. She received the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government (2006), the Australian-India Council Special Award for her contribution to Indian art (2009) and the Amrita Sher-Gil Samman from the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi (2015).
Dr Pande's focus is to promote art by combining art and education, with a continuing engagement with Indian aesthetics.
Her curatorial projects include significant exhibitions in India and abroad. Her areas of interest within Indian cultural studies are the aesthetics of the erotic and gender. Reworking on important Indian museum collections is another area of her expertise. A prolific writer on Indology and art history, Dr Pande has authored several acclaimed books including, most recently, The Little Book of Pleasure (2017).
the night-flowering jasmine is my favourite flower, till date, and every home of mine has always had the parijat tree. From August to December, I never fail to run into my garden and gather the delicate pearl-like blossoms with an orange stem and gently float them in a silver cup of water in front of the gods on my personal altar. As a Brahmanical Hindu growing up in a traditional ritualistic household, spirituality was associated with the ritual of prayer. As a young child 1 remember we could not eat food without saying our prayers and even today, I do not sip my favourite drink of strong milky Indian tea from a big ceramic cup which is the high point of my day without first performing my daily prayers.
Aah...the parijat tree was my earliest memory of the happiest time of my childhood, in my maternal grandmother's home in Meerut. It was my job to pick up the fragile flowers and hand them to my grandmother who would then tell me to place them in the pooja room, the most intimate and precious room in the sprawling haveli, where I spent many a glorious autumn vacation of my young life.
My love and fascination for these flowers is as ardent today as it was more than 50 years ago. Nyctanthes arbor-tristis is really a small tree with flaky grey bark. The flowers are simple with either a five- to eight-lobed white corolla with a flame orange-red centre. They are grouped in clusters of two to seven, with each flower opening at dusk and dropping off the tree at dawn. Later I learned why the tree's scientific name is arbor-tristis sad tree or the tree of sorrow-because it loses its brightness during the day. But what really stays in my heart is the more romantic story of how the Princess Parijataka's heart was broken by the Sun God Surya as he flamed across the sky from the east to the west. Since the Sun God did not reciprocate her feelings, she killed herself in despair and from her cremated ashes, the parijat tree arose. Since the Princess Parijataka is unable to bear the sight of her love during the day, she blooms only at night. The flowers are shed at the touch of the first rays of the sun, and their fragrance then floods the entire region as a sign of the undying love of the princess for her lover, the Sun God.
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