SEASON'ed Contemplation

These days, I unlock my day a little late than usual, and keep bargaining for “just two more mins” with myself. An hour up - still under the duvet, I have to trade-off: either attend the classes or stay back and appreciate the lovely weather outside. I, obviously, pick the latter.

Though I believe every season has its own charisma, winters are special. It manages to create an “elusive calm” in my mind, like none other. There is no harshness of the summers or the melancholy of the rains… and spring though beautiful; you miss it before you know it has set in! Winter comes right at the end of the year (at least in my part of the globe) defeating all the other seasons – to give life a much needed stillness.

After idling around in my bed for another 20 mins, I step onto the terrace, wrapped in my woolens, and it starts drizzling. I drag in as much fragrance of the wet earth as I can- and I wish I had a magic box in which this smell could be kept captured forever. The fog, though not very dense, makes everything appear vague. The only thing clearly visible is a small road speckled with the rain water, on which a brown colored stray dog (lazier than me) is curled up like a ball.

The droplets of water and the chilled air try to pleasantly pierce through the pores of my skin. My palms look pale and the finger nails -light blue. But it’s too mesmerizing a place to leave. I enjoy holding the small stainless steel glass of piping hot tea in my palms, trying to absorb the heat -as I sip it miserly, so that it lasts longer.

The sky is grey and gloomy, the winds disturbingly cold - and then the most beautiful thing I have ever known appears - the winter sunshine. In a moment, everything lights up. The leaves of the trees shine as though an artist has just colored them - and the paint is still wet. The droplets on my black woolen act as small mirrors, reflecting the sunshine and looking like tiny stars. I open my palms, to soak up as much warmth as I can. As I close my eyes and stare at the sky, a golden-yellow warmth seeps into the soul taking me to a place where I have never ventured before –nirvana-(ish) ;) indeed !!

I sit there wondering, about the contrast – of cold and warmth. Each is incomplete without the other, and each derives its meaning from the other-half. Just like I realize the value of home – after being a migrant for 4 years, or , say, we term someone beautiful, only because we know what is “ugly”. Without the ugliness, beauty loses its significance. At a more macro level, I thought, we value happiness only after life gets interspersed with bouts of grief and sorrow.

I thought as I came back to my room…this little contemplation was worthwhile – much more than the classes I bunked this winter morning.