Many things to many people, the rose is a constant source of delight, inspiration…and profit. Over the years, it has caught the imagination of the world and become an enduring symbol with its own legion of literary admirers, writes Sherna Gandhy.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, said Gertrude Stein cynically. She’s probably in a minority of one. Through the ages and in many cultures, the rose has been not just a rose, but also a symbol. Of romance, of mystery, beauty, sweetness, purity. Except for the Loony Right in India, which sees it as Enemy No One, ravisher of pure Indian youth, particularly if it’s red and presented or accepted on February 14.

The rose is many things to many people. If you are a poet, it is a metaphorical and allegorical godsend. If you belong to the gardening fraternity, the sheer variety of this one species of flower, its range of colours and of form, is a source of constant delight and profit. And, if you still believe in Chacha Nehru, you will sport the said bloom on your coat/kurta lapel (in fact, I’m sure that the antipathy of the Loony Right to red roses on Valentine’s Day has more to do with its antipathy to Nehruvian ideology than to Western values).

So, what’s with this species of flora that it has inspired such extreme emotions, generally of the positive and loving kind (the Loony Right being an aberration in this, as in most things)? Let me confess at the outset that I am all for flower power and that floribundas, grandifloras, polyanthias, tea and cabbage roses, etc, etc, rate high on my list of favourites. Yet, while I concede that roses, like our Miss Indias, have the best chance of being crowned winner in any Miss Flower World/ Universe competition, a pretty good case can be made out for, say, a basket of petunias, a bed of pinks or even a single dahlia, lotus or orchid. That arch romantic, William Wordsworth, had a very good word to say about ‘a host of golden daffodils’, and the lily and lotus have their share of literary admirers. But they pale into insignificance before the enormous fan following that the rose commands.

If the rose has caught the imagination of the world it is in large part because the English dote on it and have exported it to all sorts of climes in the wake of the onward march of the Union Jack. Consequently, it struggles most valiantly to flourish in climes and soils inhospitable to it. For example, every Indian city with any horticultural pretensions is bound to have several rose shows annually, and I bet a Rose Society exists in Timbucktoo and Jhumritalaya! The lotus may be our national flower, and the ‘lotus pose’ and ‘lotus eyed’ are familiar Indian references, but most people in any nursery you visit in the country will be buying a rose plant.

Go to the index of any book of quotations and you will find more references to ‘rose’ than to any other single word, except, perhaps, ‘love’, of which the rose is, of course, an emblem. Its physical construction has only added to its value as a symbol. The beautifully arranged, closely furled petals look like they are guarding a secret at the heart. “A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded/A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet unfolded” as the dashing Lord Byron once contended.

Robert Herrick famously saw the rose as a symbol of transience: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/Old Time is still aflying/And this same flower that smiles today/Tomorrow will be dying.” And Christopher Marlowe even has a shepherd – not the most imaginative of persons – promising his love: “And I will make thee beds of roses/And a thousand fragrant posies”. The much-quoted Bard, aka William Shakespeare, proved the case for the eternal essence of the rose by insisting that “that which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet”.

So, too, have those famous purveyors of romantic fantasy, Messrs Mills and Boon, who chose the rose as the emblem of their hugely profitable publishing enterprise. Ever since then, we women have confidently expected tall, dark, handsome, sensitive and masterful men to carry us off to their villas in the Mediterranean, haciendas in Spain, chic town houses in London, manors in Scotland. And we will, of course, live as blissfully as Romeo and Juliet would have had, if the slight misunderstanding over the Elizabethan equivalent of sleeping pills had not caused them to be tragically and everlastingly parted.

So popular is the flower that various cultures have laid claim to begetting it. It was apparently planted in the gardens of the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians and Chinese. The Persians claim the first rose flourished in the beautiful province of Gulistan. The Greeks claim the rose was a nymph roused from sleep by Apollo (since their lecherous gods were always after some nymph or other, we need not pay too much heed to that). The Arabs believed that the rose sprang from a drop of sweat that fell from the brow of the Prophet. According to Christian tradition, the rose flourished in the Garden of Eden, but the thorns came later – after man’s fall, of course.

Somewhere along the way, the rose got co-opted into the language of love and became the favoured mode of expressing it, giving that fat little Greek boy, Cupid, a run for his money. The association may have started with the 13th century French epic Roman de la Rose (Romance of the Rose). Since this tome is several thousand lines long (it took two authors to complete it), and both obtuse and abstruse, I’m afraid I’ve never gone beyond the title page. For all I know, it may have nothing to do with love, but since it’s French, that’s highly unlikely.

Passionate gardeners may think all this association of roses with romance is a lot of twaddle. To them, the rose is precious because of its infinite variety; it lends itself easily to hybrid experiments, growing even more beautiful in every new avatar.

Others attribute its popularity to its scent, which in some varieties (like our Indian ‘gaoti’) is very strong. The famous English rosarian, Graham Stuart Thomas, says in his book, The Graham Stuart Rose Book: “I have no doubt, myself, that it owes its perennial popularity to its scent; it was for this priceless quality that it was originally cultivated.”

There’s one instance when the rose was used as a symbol not of love but of war. Trust the Brits to name a war the ‘War of the Roses’. In the 15th century, the rival houses of York (white rose) and Lancaster (red rose) fought a long and bitter war for supremacy. Neither side won, so, being pragmatic, they decided that they’d better intermarry. The symbol of that union was the Tudor rose, half red and half white. In its way, ultimately, a symbol of peace.