Forget fashion week, catch Delhi's butterfly season

Delhi is the capital of fashion shows, yet not enough people seem to attend the free fashion shows held bi annually across the Capital's parks. Between the months of February and March, and then again after monsoon, September to November, is butterfly season, with visitors arriving in the city's ample gardens and green corners, cultivated and wild, to parade their coats of metallic blue of the Blue Jay and Blue Bottle butterflies, flaming orange of Orange Tip butterflies and contrasting black and red of the Swallowtails.

The sheerness of Rina Dhaka's lycra leggings can't match the delicate-ness of the tiny Plains Cupid - an unremarkable brown with orange and white eyespots with closed wings, which turns into an exquisite shade of lavender blue when it spreads its wings. A JJ Valaya coat influenced by the Mughal era cannot be as plush as the Blue Moon Butterfly - a black butterfly with white orbs surrounded by purple half moons - a arrangement of colours that can only be described as divine, and creating a two toned effect of a black-blue velvet coat with white patchwork - fit for kings - in flight. As for the beauty of the Blue Pansy - its exquisitely perfect orange eyelets, on a body of blue of shiva's mythical throat, there are, simply, no words. Even Tarun Tahiliani, king of couture, would gladly accept defeat at this piece of work.

Not only is the average Delhiite - rushing about commuting frantically between office and home with 100 things on his mind - too preoccupied or simply uninterested in the beauty of the colours and the sheer genius of mixed colouring and texture that real fashion designers can only hope to emulate, even our official data has been slow getting in on the act.

Butterfly documentation is a tedious and slow job - and the last documentation was done in 2002, when 82 species were recorded in the Capital, according to a report published last year in the Hindustan Times. The last documentation before this has an even longer gap - it was in 1970.

Both citizens' lack of awareness of the exquisite beauty in their surroundings as well as official apathy is a pity. Delhi, with its untamed ridge and flowery roundabouts, it's private bungalows and colony parks, make butterfly watching an easy hobby to pick up. Unlike bird watching, which requires you to take time out and visit sanctuaries with expensive shooting equipment, butterflies can be seen, and followed, and even captured on the smartphone, by one and all.

The Common Rose Swallowtail

Butterflies have distinct personalities too. Everyone can pick their favourite, but the Common Rose Swallowtail butterfly, with its large jet black wings, like ribbed net, and rose-red detailing, is a striking species that seems aware of its beauty. It glides majestically and at a leisurely pace around the garden, as if an eternal showstopper - and confident in its strong red colouring which puts off predators. The Commn Mormon is another similar handsome butterfly, a jet black beauty with a white band, or cummerbund, across the lower wings. But there's trickery involved - the female of this morphs the red bodied Crimson Rose butterfly, so that predators are confused and don't approach.

The Lime butterflies, another species of garden butterfly, while beautiful and large winged, are not endemic to Indian subcontinent, a traveller pest that is said to travel far and fast. While garden butterflies roam cultivated spaces with mandarin orange trees and other ornamental plants, the butterflies endemic to a region will be drawn to the area's herbs and wild flora. The Common Castor, as if well fed on the oil of the castor plant, and an grease brown base to match, can be seen in early winter sunning on the mud, it's exquisite pencil shaving like markings off set against the brown.

Wild grasses and wild milkweed are the natural hosts for glories like the Clouded Sulphurs - a particularly large and joyous species, comprising numerous small and big white and yellow butterflies that are social and playfully run across the gardens in the air, as if chasing one another.  They are particularly delightful for children - with its large white wings and body, it looks like a fairy or a grand miss havisham, in frayed lace, holding a magic wand. These, while social and are also shy - it's rare for them to sit still with open wings - so that's a shot you have to try hard for, despite them being the commonest butterflies to find.

The Plain Tiger butterfly is among the first ever recorded butterflies in Chinese art, and the archetypical butterfly of India - it is aloof, travelling a solitary path with its strong flight. The orange and black spotted Common Leopard butterfly on the other hand has a quick, rapid flight - appearing absent minded as it travels a distance, only to turn back, as if confused - it is supposed to be fiercely guard its territory, though, chasing other butterflies away (quite the leopard it's named after, it turns out).

Butterflies are fascinating to scientists and environmentalists, for the links they provide in the delicate biodiversity of regions, but as much to the arts and culture, for the beauty of nature they represent and the "miracle" of metamorphosis that represents the ideal of the soul in many cultures.

 Look out of a window this October. Go on, chase that butterfly. It's the fashion show of nature for free you are yet to attend.