K-Drama fans go gaga over New Town’s ‘cherry blossoms’ streets

This is the season of cherry blossoms, and they are blooming not just in Japan, but in our very own New Town too! From sweet nothings to heartfelt proposals, intense kisses and even painful goodbyes – cherry blossoms are integral to K-Dramas. In the first episode of the 2016 Korean drama Goblin, Ji Eun Tak (Kim Go Eun) tells Kim Shin (Gong Yoo) that their first love comes true if one catches a falling cherry blossom petal.Then again, in The Secret Life Of My Secretary, it was under a breathtakingly beautiful cherry blossom tree that Jung Gal-hee (Jin Ki-Joo) got fired by her boss Do Min-ik (Kim Young-Kwang). After a few episodes, under another such tree, Min-ik starts falling for her.

K-Drama fans enthused
Several K-Drama scenes and sequences like these have been shot with this iconic tree in the background. Although the hundreds of pink trumpet flower trees blooming this spring in New Town are not pure cherry blossoms, the uncanny similarity is giving goosebumps to Kolkata’s K-Drama fans. They find the trees very similar to those seen in Korean and Japanese productions.
These trees have become a hot topic on social media, especially on K-Drama fan pages. Garia’s Oindri Chakraborty, an entrepreneur and avid K-Drama fan, often travels to New Town for work. “During March and April, the entire area around Biswa Bangla gate turns pink. That beautiful sight reminds me of all those romantic K-Drama sequences I watched during the sleepless nights of the lockdown,” she added.
New Town-based businessmen and nature lovers Nairit Dattagupta and Samaresh Das have made a full-fledged video to capture the beauty of these trees. Nairit, who has garnered thousands of shares and likes on social media for his video, told us, “I have seen these beauties in Japanese films, and now it’s right near my house. In one word, these trees are beautiful. New Town is my home, and I feel proud that our home turns pink for two months in a year.”

International look for new town
In 2012-13, when New Town was being planned, it was decided that each of the main avenues and roads would be covered with colourful flowering trees. “As per the urban floriculture plan, we wanted to give New Town an international look, and one of the obvious steps for that was planting cherry blossom trees. People from across the globe go to Japan, just to witness the beauty of cherry blossoms and we wanted the people here to get a similar experience,” said Debasish Sen, HIDCO chairman.
However, the plan hit a major roadblock when they realised that cherry blossoms (prunus serrulate) couldn’t survive Kolkata’s extreme summer. So, they went ahead with the closest replacement – the rosy trumpet tree (tabebuia rosea). The forest department planted almost 1,000 such trees along the arteries and some of the adjoining service lanes in New Town as an experiment. While many of those trees died due to construction activities, hundreds survived and have started blooming. “In several countries, tabebuia rosea is called cherry blossom, and we too like to call it by that name,” added Debisish.

Environment-friendly and beautiful
Talking about the city environment, Arjan said that despite being a foreign tree, the tabebuia has been vastly accepted. “Over time, the species has adapted to the Indian climate. We have seen no ill-effects of the tree on the local environment and biodiversity,” he added. Besides, cherry blossom trees have a massive pollination issue and hundreds of people suffer from allergic reactions due to that. Tabebuia doesn’t have any such issue.
Two Different species with the same magic
Environmentalists and botanists think that despite being two different species, cherry blossoms and rosy trumpet trees make for a similar spectacle. Speaking about the differences, Arjan Basu Roy, an urban planner and environmentalist, said, “Cherry blossoms cannot survive in more than 30 degrees centigrade, but tabebuia can. While tabebuia flowers have a trumpet-like structure, cherry blossoms are smaller and circular. Cherry blossoms are mostly white and baby pink in colour, but tabebuia flowers have a different shade of pink.” He further added that in the higher altitude of Northeast India, cherry blossom trees are found in abundance. “But when I saw the actual cherry blossoms in Japan, I was speechless looking at its beauty,” he added.