The Many Hues of the Green Learning
Spaces at AMU
By
A lot can happen in a garden, lawn, woods or just some scrub wilderness.
Imagination
knows no bounds when the receptive minds of inquisitive students, scholars
and teachers look out from a classroom, lab or library opening to greenery.
More rewarding is a reflective walk or an informal rendezvous in the green
learning spaces of the Aligarh Muslim University.
Ensconced in the over one thousand acre of the sprawling AMU campus, its
heritage buildings and state-of-the-art educational facilities stand
tall. What sets it apart from the rest of the city is the vastness of space and
plain featureless land between concrete monoliths; where nature finds a playground
and the academic community a respite to reflect and grow.
It is neither a Shanti Niketan with most activities in the open nor a
Mughal Garden regimented enough for entry timings enforcing a closure for most
days of the year. The AMU campus is a happy mix of nature in its myriad
manifestations. From the difficult to pronounce botanical names like Casuarina
equisitifolia and Erythrina vareigata painted on
square tin plates nailed to the trees, to the indigenous varieties
like babool and khejri, the AMU
grounds have it all to soothe the soul.
Herbal and medicinal plant cultivation of the Ajmal Khan
Tibbiya College for their Dawakhana and the Botanical Gardens of
the AMU Fort and the Prince of Wales Botanical Laboratory known as the Botany
Dept., have exotics owing their existence to the careful plant breeders. In the
manicured lawns of the Gulistan-e Syed, VC's and PVC's Lodges the hedge heights
are meticulously calculated to golden proportions and flowerbed distances are measured
to precision. The slightly unkempt gardenia of the Faculties, Offices and Halls
of residence boast of some ornamental plants, occasional patches
of bushy overgrowth and countless mighty trees having stood the test of
time.
April and May in north-India are notorious for the heat and the scorching
sun but one look at the skyline of the main University road suggests that the
sun has just entered the spring equinox. The bare lifeless branches of the
trees during fall are replaced with green foliage and flowers of all colours.
The many Gulmohar trees near the Arts Faculty are adorned
with their red flowers and Amaltas trees lower their branches with
yellow bells creating the famed golden showers. Complete with the lilac and purple
crowns of the Jacaranda it actually signifies fertility, growth and
life much needed for an academic institution.
With this first burst of summer, the Duck Pond at the T-junction Park,
where the main road bifurcates towards the Engineering Faculty and Computer
Centre is on the verge of drying up but the blooms rupture colours.
Early morning and evening walkers are greeted on the side-walks
lined with seasonal plants. One can cast a gaze beyond the lawns and the timber
stands near the Education Department and almost touch the clustered flowers in
the hanging inflorescence of the tall Fishtail Palms on both the sides of the
road.
This is also when the moths and butterflies feast in the orchards of the
AMU Fort and the bees are busy drinking up the blossoms. Be it Holi, the
festival of colours or the solar new year celebrated as nauroz by
sprinkling petals, communities with roots in peasantry, the world over indulge
in festivities marking the joys and prosperity of a new harvest. A
riot of colours in the expanses inundated with flowers - petunias, cosmos,
marigold, sweet peas, pansies, calendulas, asters, verbenas, nasturtiums,
geraniums and what not; near the Dental College, Bab-e Syed and the Victoria
Gate Nursery are just in time to party with spring.
Students sipping a late evening tea outside the kiosks near the Training
Placement Cell and Canteen make merry, chat, poke fun at and swear in
pollen laded air. The crisp freshness of each breath invigorates discussions
and revitalizes ambitions for success in future. The stark white jasmines emanate
fragrance for the moths to pollinate them but their aroma gladdening the
nostrils, fills romanticism in the scholarly life of the young people who will
forever be enchanted with the memories of their pleasant days at Aligarh.
Here, a team of writers, speakers, actors, singers, debaters and
musicians of the various co-curricular clubs of Cultural Educational Centre surcharged
with the creative energies straight out of the Kennedy Hall may stumble upon a
group of students huddled around their plant Taxonomy Professor studying the
buttress roots of the line of Arjuna trees outside the Maulana
Azad Central Library.
The hot winds during the day do not just bring dust and particles of
white sandy soil called Reh in the vernacular for
which Aligarh is even documented in the Colonial Gazetteers. Small black
cotton seeds frayed up in soft white filaments from the Semul (red silk
cotton tree), aromatic Baur (mango flowers) from the orchards near the
Sir Syed Nursery not destined to be ripe mangoes in summers, and the
winged chilbil (nut of Indian elm tree), light as
feather travel afar on the wafting breeze.
The guava and jujube trees in the Naqvi Park and the University farm
lend their fruit to humans be it the contractor of the harvest or the gangs of
marauding local children dodging the sleepy watchman. Come summer-monsoon and a
fresh offering of mangoes and jamuns in the stretch between the Art
Gallery and the Geology Dept. is the bone of contention between the rightful
owners and the intruders.
Not that these green spaces of flora come with no surprises from the
fauna. The age old Nullah near the Allama Iqbal Hall can spring
up a white-breasted water hen walking in the reeds. A massive roosting
phenomenon can be observed on any setting day at the electric wires near the
railway line behind Habib Hall. The Hariyal (Yellow Legged
Green Pigeon) fabled for its inability to feed on the ground is seen foraging
in hundreds on the Mulberry trees of the Chemistry Department lawns. The Eucalyptus
and Ashoka trees planted for cover are a nesting site for the Pariah
kites and Mynas.
Camouflaged in the high but dense crowns of the thickets with
intermingling dhak (Butea monosperma),
sheesham (Delbergia sissoo) and neem (Azadirachta
indica) trees the Grey hornbill makes a swift but suave flight gliding from
one cover to another. A close look reveals its long kinked neck and bright eyes
shining through the brown sticks. The Koel sings
sweet through the morning and the Faakhta (Laughing Dove)
laughs on the desolation of the day. Sunset is marked by the cackling flocks of
egrets returning to nests. Rubbing shoulders with its winged mates on the trees
is the tiny squirrel, often darting on the roads, grabbing a fallen fig to
nibble at after climbing back with agility, to its cosy comfort of the twig
high up.
While the girls hostels in Abdullah, Sarojini Naidu and Indira Gandhi
Halls are specially frequented by our closest primates - the menacing rhesus
monkeys, whose squeals are responded to by the frenzied shrieks of the
inmates, animal encounters also leave happy memories. The last minute exam preparations
in the early mornings are carried out in the open to avoid the other room-mates
busy with usual make-up and music. It is considered auspicious for the
candidates' performance to spot a peafowl. Though, its long meoooow call
is a regular haunting memory for every inhabitant of the hostel from day one.
On a luckier overcast day, one might see the peacock in a nuptial dance raising
its pheasant tail to display its male fitness to a lek of
peahens around.
Towards the outer periphery of the campus where the humble
gardeners pay less attention, rough country has a better chance to
prosper. Moving towards the Faculties of Law and Agriculture across the
railway crossing near the Begum Sultan Jahan Hall a jackal might be seen
sneaking through the fence in the dark or a monitor lizard may be discovered
stupefied by sunlight trying to scale a wall using its firm grip. The calm and
peaceful residential colony around the J.N. Medical College, one day throws a spectacle
of a checkered keel-back snake stiff with stress under the attention of the
selfie-mongers unaware of its venom-free fangs, on the other a mongoose emerges
from the undergrowth entering a drain to reach its burrow.
In summers and monsoon as darkness lowers its pall, the lapwing lets out
a shrill call from the sporadic shallow pools and there are torch
flies emitting light from their sooty bodies in the
secondary scrub vegetation around the Viqarul Mulk Hall. During winters
most of this animal life is hibernating but the AMU community comprising staff
and students is often out soaking in the sun, smelling the roses and swivelling
with the sunflowers. Shadows lengthen on the salubrious lawns glistening in the
winter sun as it traverses the sky concluding a short cold day.
Asrarul Haq Majaz appropriately termed
the AMU a chaman (Garden) for its bulbuls (aka students) when he penned
the Tarana (Anthem) for the University during his hostel days. Walking
barefoot in the pristine lawns of the Founder’s Residence which
houses books on and by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his personal belongings; feeling
the soft velvet grass under the feet - sometimes oozing dew, sometimes damp
under the gentle drizzles of the sprinkler irrigators; the background is lit up
by warm glows of floodlights on the newly constructed red brick structure of
the K A Nizami Centre for Quranic Studies in fine medieval architecture; and the
Quranic promise of a paradise with gardens beneath which rivers flow, comes alive.
To the gardens of AMU a humble tribute
from a learner in the words of Urdu poet Andaleeb Shadani:
Shafaq,
dhanuk, mehtaab, ghaTaen, taare, naghme, bijli, phool
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