Come Diwali and the markets are resplendent with flowers of all kinds, none shining brighter than the marigold. The biggest of Indian festivals, which ushers in abundance or at least the hope of abundance, in the Indian psyche is being celebrated with a post-Covid exuberance and grateful abandon this year.
This annual feeling of hope finds its twinning visual correlate in the effulgence of a million twinkling lamps, and the orange and yellow hues of marigold flowers by the tonne at least in all of North India. Draping marigold garlands and strewing flowers in complex floral rangolis while doing the evening pooja with marigold petals, all evoke a feeling of good tidings without much effort because they suffuse a feeling of piety.
A happy flower that bursts with strong colour, a herbal soothing fragrance and easy availability round the year, it has achieved a kind of nirvana of its own by being occasion-neutral. It comes in handy both as the highest offering to the gods as well as on more funerary somber occasions. In its sunny appeal, it heralds new horizons for a griha pravesh and its hidden intense hues hold the smoldering passion of a bride and a groom. No Indian wedding is ever complete without the exchange of marigold garlands and festoons to announce the auspicious occasion. It would seem the yellow orange spectrum strums happy tidings in the human heart. No wonder that it has gone down very well as an augury of auspiciousness.
Yet, as ubiquitous as it appears to us today, we find no mention of it in the old puranic or Vedic texts. This upstart flower creeps in only with the Portuguese, crushed between the sacks of potatoes and tomatoes and cashews that they brought when they came in as trading invaders in the early 1500s. The vibrant orange and cheerful yellow blooms swept the hearts of Indians as easy offerings to the gods so much so that today nearly 2.5 lakh hectares in the country are devoted to marigold farming. We consume more than 20 lakh tonnes of the flowers annually as of 2022.
The marigold has always been an unfussy democratic flower, available to the rich as much as the poor since it has no hot house fancies. Its other major advantage is that it grows round the year, is ready to be harvested in 150 days at most and doesn't need expensive fertilizers or much care except that it enjoys itself at coolish temperatures. The jaafri, the carmine flecked small yellow cultivar, is cheaper and even more easily available.
Flower offerings or pushpanjali have been an integral and important part of Indian worship and slowly a divine order was established of what kinds of flowers could be offered to the gods. Thus, blue-coloured dhatura and calotropis flowers were offered to Shiva and red hibiscus and madar flowers were offered to Devi. Lotuses, an integral part of the abundant native flora, were naturally offered to Lakshmi who appears in religious iconography emerging out of a wet lotus as befits the goddess of fertility and prosperity.
In fact, Kamadeva or Manmadha uses a sugarcane bow, its string made of beetles, and shoots his arrows of desire that are tipped with flowers. The five flowers are naturally indigenous white lotus, ashoka and mango flowers, jasmine and the blue lotus, all native species.
But yellow seems to evoke effusive happy feelings with a greater frequency so that a myriad of yellow flowers are presented to gods and goddesses. Thus, the champaka is presented to Saraswati, to Vishnu the moulsari and to Ganesha the marigold along with yellow bananas. Bagalamukhi, one of the fierce dasa maha vidya goddesses, is also offered yellow flowers.
In the Hindu aesthetic, marigolds sit nicely with an interplay of gold and Lakshmi that has come down to us in the mirroring of abundance and gold. In the Rg Veda’s Sri Suktam hymn, we are told of Lakshmi as golden-hued and adorned with golden garlands. To please Lakshmi, tradition has it that one can offer 108 golden lotuses or the less privileged can simply get by offering golden yellow marigold flowers.
The marigold brings together in our collective imagination all of what Hindu theology tries to amalgamate, sensation, feeling and creativity.
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