Saturday, March 10, 2012

Romantic Spring or Invitation to Summer

I often wondered why poets & romantics called spring the season of love, all I knew was, ' Hello, summer is on it way, just a matter of a month to unfurl itself all over". And all those so called spring festivals, most of the time it becomes warm already, & every time the cuckoo calls, its nothing but an indication that the weather has become one more degree warmer today. I feel like telling it to shut up, nothing sweet about its shrill voice singing in so called pancham surrr... It hurts the ears, especially if its shrieking just outside your window. One of the most irresponsible bird, can't even build a nest, dumps its eggs in other birds nests, good for nothing, how can anyone feel romantic with the creature shrieking???

Basant utsav, that's what its called, with Saraswati puja in Bengal & other eastern states, everyone wearing the yellow & orange colour, making it unbearable to look around. When the cold has already started ebbing away, & sun becoming stronger, looking all around & seeing people in yellows & oranges, everywhere, one just feels so jaundiced. Of course the timing is good, the final exams of all institutions are to begin, best time to invoke & please the lady of knowledge & learning, but no one seems to have noticed that this Lady wears only white, while other go about celebrating her with yellows & oranges. i positively feel she doesn't get very pleased with this, no wonder education in India is so screwed up.

And what better way to go through with the romantic season, chicken pox & measles give good company this time of the year, just blame it on these diseases if any student cannot score later in the finals that always happens during the peak of summer.

And then that disgusting festival of colours, definitely started by some morons who wanted to go a step further in wiling away their time & eve teasing. Some lazy MCP must have started the festival, centuries ago & linked the name Krishna to it, so that gullible women fall for it, & come out to 'Play" with colours, & thus the pigs get to have some "clean" fun. Yah right clean, wonder in what way. Go ahead misbehave with women, & chant' Bura na mano holi hai". The festival unites people, blah, when someone comes and spills colour on my clean compound wall,throw toxic colour on me & pass lewd comments, makes lewd gestures, or chops off fresh branches from trees, for bonfire, I definitely don't feel the unity, all i can feel is throw such people into the bonfire. Holi or festival of colours, to welcome the spring is nothing but a traditional sanction given by the forefathers of Indian tradition to misbehave with women. And where is spring by the way, by the time it is Holi, its already hot,

The Indian summer never wants to go away, its forever there, sitting tight, with its roots deep down into the Indian soil, & the hot air all over the Indian sky, and it has characters too, " Hot & Dry, Hot & Humid". Whats the difference, it anyways hot hot hot, & no, not hot in that sense, this is hot, where one would feel suffocated with even one more person in the same room because the body temperature would also add few more degrees to the atmospheric temperature, making one feel more uncomfortable.

I have noticed how people go ga ga over how much the summer is more comfortable & bearable in their city or home town than others. try catching a North Indian or one in central India describing the comfort of their summer, most often one can hear them say, " oh, ours is much better, because there is no perspiration", while those who live in the coastal cities will claim theirs is much better, " oh at least we have the sea, so the tides keep is much cooler, & with the perspiration, sitting under a fan is very comforting," Donkeys, neither realizes that it is hot anyways. In the dry central & north, a summer stroke is common because the dry heat acts upon the skin, dehydrating the body more, & lack of perspiration doesn't make them realize that. On the other hand at the coastal regions, they perspire so much that, that itself leads to dehydration, so big deal, either way, drinking gallons of water is important, irrespective of where you come from.

And what with all the load shedding, no where in India can anyone have a comfortable summer anymore. At one time we heard of the term load shedding, living in a city, had protected us from a lot of hardships including load shedding. Now which city is free from it?? Haha... at least in some way the country has achieved some sort of equality now, everywhere there is load shedding.

Once Indian summer is here,it never wants to go away. Its just there, always, forever. Other seasons just find some gap here & there & slip in, only to be thrown out by old lady summer. Monsoon time, June to September, firstly Monsoon is not able to enter because its become too hot, then it has to force its way in with a huge cyclone & storm, to be able to settle in. But the summer will be lurking somewhere in the corner, just waiting for the rains to stop, & there its back with all the humidity as a support system. I have noticed how much of a tussle monsoon & summer have with each other, when it rains , nice & cool, as soon as it stops, back to hot & humid. Also there is a sort of competition between the two with how much each one can harass the humans. Summer tries to scare simply by its heat strokes, while monsoon shoots its cyclones, & cloud bursts, causing floods. Notice how hot it gets during the month of October, during the Navratri time, days are unbearably hot & sweaty, & by evening thunder clouds start gathering & begins to pour. Oh yah , some consider monsoon too to be romantic, yeah right, in India, with garbage floating in the flood waters every where, stink, muck, water borne diseases, quite romantic. Either way from spring to monsoon the cuckoo never stops shrieking. Thank God for autumn, when both summer & monsoon get too tired trying to show their might, and just back off to recuperate, silently autumn sneaks in, bring with it the message of approaching winter, at least even if every place in India don't get cold, it will be pleasant, for sometime at least. Phew....