It's spring, find yourself some flower-shade

There is a short time of the year in India when you don't run for the shade, and the air is saturated with a honey-in-whisky sweetness.

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Tulips, not dust motes, emerge from carefully tended roundabouts and new leaves unfurl with a blush. The short, spectacular Indian spring is here.

There's a clock that runs southwards to northwards in India. It's the flower clock. In the south, the semal is already blooming. An Indian tree with large, colourful flowers: red, orange, yellowthe semal is unmissable. Semals flower once a year, and they make it count. The trees drop their leaves and put on masses of flowers like a string of coloured bulbs. The flower-cup is redolent with nectar- and all kinds of birds, insects and mammals visit to feast on it. In the long winter in the north, the first semal has just started blooming because spring is touching the trees. As the blooms open, watch out for different combinations of birds, bats, squirrels and monkeys on the blossoms. This is an extra-sensory tree. If you miss the birds on the flowers or the bats, butterflies or bees, you won't be missing the flowers altogether. Because they will be plonking all around you, lushly carpeting the ground.

Soon, the warm, saturated colours of the season will be replaced by the stark gaze of summer-pitiless, sweeping, missing nothing, scraping out the last corners of the outdoors with its heat.

But till then, there is this unusual season where wildlife is known to do unusual things. In the gentle sun, otherwise shy or solitary birds bask or flock together. This is the only time of the year when you see Brown-headed or Coppersmith barbets sitting together on a single tree, leaf-green and fluffed up, soaking up the sun. Normally, these fruit-eating birds will fight each other off. At this time though, they look like a group of neighbours in a community hall enjoying a run of songs togetherlike they will tolerate each other as long as they can enjoy something together.