No 'aloo' this summer

The six month long Indian art extravaganza — Indian Summer — will kick-start at the British Museum in London in May. One of the highlights of the fest is called India Landscape. Richard Blutton, the curator of the show says, “Right in the centre courtyard of the museum, we have ‘The landscape’ which is created in association with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This will showcase the impressive biodiversity of the Indian subcontinent, taking visitors on a journey from the mountainous environment of the Himalayas, through a temperate region and ending in a sub-tropical zone centered on a tank filled with lotus blossoms. The landscape will highlight plant use in India — as food, medicine and in trade and the way plants such as chilli (native to South America) have travelled and become completely indigenised.” Richard adds, “There will be alloo (potato), brinjal, onions and many other Indian plants.”

But what is most amusing is that all these saplings are not going to be imported from India — The reason, Richard explains, “We were initially planning to import these from India. But we figured that due to a clearance law, it would have taken us almost a year to get these plants from India to London. So we decided to get the saplings from Europe itself.”