The Earth and the sound it deserves

“For Man gave Earth its saddest sound..its saddest sound”. As I was cruising down the highway from my workplace to my home, this astounding piece of poetry by Simon and Garfunkel was playing in my head and on my mp3 player. As I looked out of the air-conditioned bus towards the Arabian Sea and the high-tide waters ominously lashing onto the mangroves near Vashi creek and the puny fishermen’s canoes that swayed gently in the late afternoon winds, I couldn’t help but think to myself how appropriately relevant these words are to the times we live in. For Man, who once reveled in planting trees and worshipping mountains and rivers, has also given the Earth its saddest sound. The sound of ignorance. The sound of apathy. The sound of 21^st century civilization.

I live in a world of contradictions. The city of Mumbai, where I live, experienced the worst floods ever in Indian history in July 2005. Thousands lost their lives, many more lost their homes, and almost everyone in the city developed an unhealthy aversion to the rains from thenceforth. For a place that experiences one of the harshest monsoons on this side of the globe for a good four months every year, this aversion was not going to be easy to live with for most Mumbaikars. Post-flood studies showed that the natural course of one of the most important rivers flowing through Mumbai, the Mithi, had been tampered with, to make space for more dwellings for more people within a city that is literally bursting at its seams and sides and pockets. The population of Mumbai surpasses a staggering 1.3 crores and more people are coming in every day. Studies also showed that the drains across the city were getting choked because of a large number of plastic filth that has been accumulating over the years. Most Mumbaikars are ignorant of this plight. The ones who’re aware choose to forego taking any constructive action because the ingrained attitude often hums to the sound of “What difference can one person make in a city of 1.3 crore?”

Contradiction number 1:

The cycle goes something like this: A certain number of enlightened educated people who believe in being civic-minded and liberal, take standard steps towards making the city cleaner, less polluted, and less threateningly warm every summer. They start with cleaning up the beaches, propagating the use of cloth or paper bags, using environmentally friendly products and making other environmentally friendly lifestyle choices. For a brief perfect moment, life takes on a rosy tinge and people suddenly seem unrealistically cherubic and healthy. As the city thrives, more people from elsewhere are obviously attracted to its riches and the urge to unravel the secret of a healthier, more glowing populace. Its common human nature. Land-hopping from bounty-less lands to bountiful ones has been the trend since the Homo Erectus migrated from Africa across Eurasia over a million years ago in search of food and better climate. National park boundaries get blurred as migrants set up homes (read shanties) near the peripheries of parks. Animals get confused between usual prey and livelihood or humans. Clearly, in a city with an ever increasing population, there are never going to be enough homes for all. The seams that are bursting at Mumbai’s sides are stretched to their Lycra limits and are visible to the naked eye. As populations rise, basic needs are left unfulfilled. Land, water, sanitation, education – there is a dearth for all. Nobody believes things can get any better, because face it, in a city with 1.3 crore people and still counting, who has the patience to bother? Beaches become sleeping and defecating grounds for the impoverished, cloth and paper bags are only for the rich and fancy (the poor stick to the readily available and less expensive plastic), environment-friendly products become rarities, everybody revels in a certain apathetic attitude and debauchery and the city slumps down to its choking, blocking, flooding, overheated self again.

And then they try to save the mangroves near my home by the sea, and in the process make the seas vanish and sea-life is left floundering and this completes the contradiction thoroughly..

Contradiction number 2:

The world around us is changing and yet, there are things that have remained the same for centuries. The powerful have managed to dislocate the powerless from their own lands and they continue to do so all across India. The reasons differ only ever so slightly – either mining for scant resources that are depleting because of over-use by the very same population that encourages the use of cloth bags etc. or other forms of “urbanization” or “industrialization” – which all ultimately mean the same for those being displaced.

My world of contradictions is apparent in the forces that try to wean the lands and the resources away from indigenous populations. I work at an Institute where many are involved in fighting and thereby attempting to diminish the hazards faced by such populations at the hands and bulldozers of “State and corporate villains”. On the one hand, we talk and debate this situation (often alluding to the story of Pandora and the Na’avi) and our minds are clear of any ghosts of us being at fault. But therein lays the contradiction. For all the fighting for the rights of the marginalized and their rich bountiful lands and to keep them from breathing down harmful life-threatening fumes that the villains are only too keen to open up like tear gas on a marching protesting crowd of unsuspecting people, our city remains at its perilous worst. These very people remain unnervingly ignorant of doing things the right way to keep our neighbourhoods from clogging and congesting and going down the environmental sewage drain.

The fact is that, nowadays, people are involved in pursuits that are gratifying to them at material and spiritual levels, but that stay far behind on an intellectual and sensory level. What then can one human do? I’m not referring to lofty ideals of making the environment of the entire world blissfully better by one sweep of my non-existing magic wand. But hear me out..for I am the voice of reason. I begin with myself..my home..my neighbourhood..and travel as far as my mind allows me with cleanliness and purity and wisdom. I do my own duty, not as a conscientious citizen of this city of country..but as an intelligent, thinking, and understanding human. The greatest gift humans have is the mind and we’d be fools to not make good of it while we can.

I don’t litter, I don’t use plastic, I don’t spit except in the washbasins at home, I do not waste water, I switch off the lights and the fans in my room and others when I leave them and there’s nobody occupying them, I stick to public transport, I don’t burst firecrackers during the festival season or otherwise, I line-dry my clothes (I used to do it even when I lived in the UK for two years), I blog about others spitting as if it is their god-given birthright and how tearful that makes me, I compulsively promise myself that one day the world shall be cleaner, brighter, funner, more humane and properly lit with alternate sources of energy which humans respect. I indulge in a very basic sense of environment friendly acts (nothing too fancy or organic or alternative or non-combustible). If 1% of the population of Mumbai does the same, that would mean 1,00,000 Mumbaikars would thereby make this city a highway to global paradise; the numbers are astounding even in such miniscule quantities. Such simple gestures by the world at large would be golden!!

Man ought to give the Earth its loveliest sound..the sound of beauty and justice and cleanliness and a greener world where leaves rustle and birds chirp and the oceans swell and babies sigh peacefully in their sleep.

I was sitting in a railway station, got a ticket for my destination..and then free association came up with this.

I remember watching an episode of ‘Different Strokes’ a few weeks back. It was a strange episode..I think they were trying out an idea for a spinoff for another show – about immigrants in the US learning to talk in English..learning American culture and mannerisms etc. The only thing of interest in that episode was this one dialogue by an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, who, on entering the Drummond’s Park Avenue penthouse, says, “This is your home? In Czechoslovakia, only railways stations look so grand”.

I didn’t quite understand that statement. Was Czechoslovakia such a majestic nation that their railways stations were built like Manhattan penthouse apartments? If so, why did so many people still want to flee the country and settle in democracies like the US? Was it just one of the manifestations of socialism, where such basic things got turned upside down – where the citizens constitute groups of dissidents wanting to reject the country’s communist regime, while their railway stations remain content in their architectural splendour, oblivious to the miseries of the people? I figured it might’ve been the time..the era..its place in world history back then which might’ve led us to view this as a discrepancy. After all, nobody claims that communism hampered the aesthetic senses of architects and people in general. The Red Square after all was built in Czarist Russia.

My thoughts were not centred on this though. What I was thinking of, was how certain public places become symbolic of a country’s people..its politico-social history. Like railway stations do. Sort of like signboards that say, ‘This is our country. And these are our people. Live and accept. And enjoy’.

Most railway stations in Mumbai would have to write the ‘live and accept’ very prominently on their signboards. In bold. Doing so would acknowledge the fact that most railway stations here suck and are dirty..while at the same time providing outsiders with a piece of warning so they’re not taken too much by surprise at the filth and decay in and around railway stations. The ‘enjoy’ would be a rare word used within India..at least within Mumbai..and looked at with suspicion at places that display it.

The pleasure in writing this post lies in recalling countries and places where this is not the case. I can think of a few railway stations elsewhere, which would proudly scream the word out to commuters and visitors, asking them to enjoy and have a pleasant stay. In a believable fashion. Switzerland is one such country. Railway stations in Switzerland are so reflective of what the people and the country are like – they’re effortlessly clean and welcoming. And that’s a rare thing to achieve!!

Before continuing on with this, I must say I’m not an expert on railway stations. I’ve travelled by trains very few times; all through college and later I’ve travelled mostly by bus. But there is an enigma of sorts that trains and railway stations possess which I haven’t completely fathomed yet. The fact is that they do reflect a microscopic view of the population of a country going about its daily routine – in a sociological experiment to study human behaviour and its transition through time and in the course of one day, a railway station could provide the perfect setting for a random sample collection. In Mumbai, I’ve known people who swore to never travel by trains, become train aficionados. I have a cousin who’s obsessed with the Indian Railways – listening to him talk is like having an overabundance of station names and technologies thrown down at you while you try and decipher the meaning of this fixation which apparently exists in many people!!

But the point of this article is not trains or the Indian Railways. What’s amusing is that, when you start considering how indicative railway stations are of the prevalent social scenario of a particular country, it’s almost eerie. You begin to wonder why the Indian government doesn’t end up spending more money in revamping them and their premises, and then printing photographs on brochures to send off to other nations, as a way to brag about the fulfilling role they play in the lives of its citizens. Who needs statistics indicating the GDP and celebrities endorsing tourism, when you have gleaming railway stations with pleased people running to and fro looking like they actually ‘enjoy’ being there – going to work at rush hours and trying to look appropriately nonchalant doing so?

But alas, reality is not so rosy. Indian railway stations are surrounded by piles of garbage that are deeper than Pink Floyd lyrics

Let’s review a few railway stations..and what they signify. As I mentioned, there’re the Swiss stations. Sure, just on the outskirts of Zurich there’s lots of graffiti and the area does look like a shady ghetto, but the rooftop gardens that you can see through the trains, where, during office lunch breaks, you see people sipping cold drinks under sun umbrellas, compensates for the harsher alternatives. The train station for the capital city Berne is magnificent. There’s nothing overly official about it..and it doesn’t ooze the feeling of power that you might expect out of a country’s capital; but when an entire city is named UNESCO’s World Heritage Site, rest assured the city’s train station would be splendid!!

Zurich train station

Outside Berne railway station..the glass enclave and the trams

Lucerne, on the other hand, has a more modest station..although it is the most popular tourist destination in Switzerland. The station itself is non-descript, but it has some of the most wonderfully accommodating staff I’ve ever found anywhere – when you do find them, that is. When a close friend and I were staying in Lucerne, for just 3 days last July, we did all our travelling through trains. On our first day of exploring the country, on a gloriously warm summer day, we got to Lucerne train station and decided we’d have to book our tickets on the machine ourselves because there was no ticket counter. When we started the ticket retrieving process, we found out all the instructions were in Swiss-German. After frantically but intelligently punching the right buttons and getting 2 tickets, my friend and I looked pleased with ourselves. It was before we realized we still had to figure out which platform the train would be coming to. Swiss trains are staggeringly on time; and train stations there have platforms up to numbers 58, 60 etc!! Even three days was not sufficient time to figure out how the system of platform numbers works there; and right then, we were sufficiently alarmed. Just then, we came across the lone station personnel on the platform – he was a middle-aged man in uniform and he was carrying a gadget with him which from a distance looked suspiciously like an ‘Etch a Sketch’ model.

We approached this man to ask him about our train’s arrival and realized immediately that he didn’t speak or understand English. By now, we were more than nervous. We’d come to the station on time, not knowing the ticket-booking process would take so long. Now we were in more of a soup..because the tickets were booked – and travel in Switzerland is EXPENSIVE..for that matter, most things in Switzerland are – yet, we had no idea which platform we were to rush to, and now we were playing Pictionary with a sweet man who carried an ‘etch a sketch’ toy to work!!

The fact is though, that at the time, with all our nervousness, the man actually managed to make me giggle. I can’t say now for sure, that it wasn’t hysteria making me giggly, but the fact that my friend was amused too – and he wouldn’t giggle hysterically..thats solely my forte!! – is some proof that the man did actually amuse us terribly!! He made a lot of random etchings on his toy, he even said a lot of friendly-sounding stuff in German, while he also pointed his pen towards a certain spot on the paper he had tucked under his arm. All of this while smiling – no, beaming – at us.

We felt like god’s golden children right then..and he our saviour. We were so glad to have just seen him explain things to us, that for a moment we forgot we had a train to catch. Thankfully, an English-speaking official came by and sweetly directed us to the correct platform. And that’s how everyone in Switzerland is – sweet and neat without being overly so. Every train station there looks like a picture postcard – well, they have spots of peeling colour and some are uncomfortably small – but they’re all adorned with bright cheerful flowers, are clean and homely, and have good seating arrangements. Not to mention the trains are absolutely on time!!

I was often led to believe that Switzerland is a breathtakingly beautiful country. Somehow, I didn’t get that feeling. In a way, I liked it better this way – the city streets and cafes were charming and quaint enough to be old-fashioned and the stores were stylish and expensive enough to remain untouchable – but what was amazing were the flowers in every window, the gardens that you could see through the train windows, the country’s flag perched proudly atop houses and in backyards, the innumerable lakes and streams, and the big lovable dogs. You can see all of this while (a) you’re at the train station, (b) on your way to or from the train station or (c) travelling in the train itself. The perfect microscopic view of the nation and its people (and animals).

England is different. Everything is grey around English train stations. In Sheffield, the train station is the first thing you see as your coach enters the city. It is big and intimidating; with a huge dome and a glass front and several art pieces near the entrance. You can feel the busy lives of people around – in trench-coats and skinny ties. A town near Sheffield called Chesterfield has one of the funniest stations you’ll ever see. It’s technically outside the town and you get out of the train directly into the ticket collector’s booth – that’s how small it seems. But then, they’ve managed to acquire space to build a parking lot and a driveway which enables it to have the look of a domestic airport. Southampton, on the other hand, is a lot more laid-back for a big city. For a while after I saw the train station there, I wondered if most people just travel to and from Southampton by flights (since they have an international airport) or by ferries (lots of them..the sea is right there!!). Bristol is grey, grey, and some more grey. My memories of the Bristol train station are a bit vague because I was dazed with pain during my visit there; but I recall the desolate look of the station, a wooden bridge, and the grey. It’s a very uncomfortable-looking station.

Do English train stations resemble a microcosm of life in England and the English? They so do!! Train stations are the archetype of English standards. They stand there – either as glass and stone structures looking opulent and out of place in the neighbourhood of other brick buildings or dull grey brick constructions standing out against green and blue coloured “modern” buildings;  unbothered about the architectural anomaly they create for the given city.  That’s how the English people are too – fussy about their own kinds and strangely unbothered with anything else. At train stations, this type of behaviour is evident to such a large degree it’s hilarious. Everybody has this scrunched-up look on their faces, and groups of people getting out of the station whirl so much wind around them, simply because they seem to walk much faster than everyone else. The buses have to wait for groups of station-premise-leaving people to cross the streets; it all looks very droll because as soon as the people get away from the train stations, into the world of regular humans, they seem normal too – almost unbelievably so. It’s such a quintessential view of all things English – they always seem either too aloof or too boisterous when they’re in groups by themselves, but once they mingle with you and others of different species, they seem hardly stiff upper-lipped – likeable in fact.

Railway stations. Train stations. Czechoslovakia had their grand penthouse-styled ones, Switzerland has the effortlessly clean and charming ones, and England’s are the epitome of grey. I feel like I’m on the brink of the afore-mentioned sociological experiment where I must try and figure out the place-people-country equation and publish it as a series of adventure stories. Study one place at a time, its relevance to the culture of that country, the importance of people’s attitudes in and around the place as well as towards such a place, and the larger social construct that is formed with the intermingling of all these forces.

And so..onwards I head towards working for such a paper. Next round – supermarkets!!

Generation Y woes.

Yesterday, my sister experienced a moment of profound sadness. For the past couple of months, in fact, ever since Maggi has made it known to the public that the beloved noodles/ketch-up/soup brand is turning 25 this year – and thereby encouraging people to write in and send their “Maggi experiences” – my sister has been gripped in a sea of age-undefined turmoil.

She’s 28 years old, and lived in a hostel and then privately with other friends during her engineering days. Clearly, she’s been a product of the fast-food loving/endorsing generation. But the thought of her 2-minute study-time companion being younger than her seems to have tarnished her cheerfully adolescent years and made her feel distinctly antiquated.

A time-scale as a bookmark to measure what she’s lost….

And then yesterday, she realised (thanks to Google’s ever thoughtful and non forgetful home-page reminders) that Tetris had just turned 25 too!! Surely that couldn’t be!! Weren’t we young and robust and pink-cheeked in the glory of our childhood, when Tetris first entered our lives? Surely we were all miniscule-aged then. And surely Tetris had been around in the western world for at least a decade before we got to play it, as most things go? Which would mean it ought to be a couple of years elder to her years. And so her thoughts continued….

But the fact is..not so much. Tetris was created in the summer of 1984..true to age. And it was in fact, made in Soviet Russia, which probably explains why it had entered the Indian markets earlier than most things have since.

And so the bookmark remains….

Example: There was a time when my friend and I would adroitly get into a super-crowded bus just to experience the adventure of being swept up in a sea of people and knowing..knowing well enough that we had the stamina to withstand the sardine-like feeling that very easily engulfs you on a local BEST bus in Mumbai. That was nearly 10 years back. Now-a-days, after a day of shopping and a good lunch and conversation with friends, we tell ourselves we deserve to ride back home in a taxi – we tell ourselves we’ve had a long hot day. Or I wait for an empty bus to turn up and get in daintily; sit down with my skirt tucked properly under me and I fan myself with a floral handkerchief.

Have we made ourselves feel this old, I begin to wonder? Every generation probably felt the passing of its heyday as strongly as only that generation can. And yet, I’m aware of a rather discomforting feeling that grows within oneself with regard to growing older. We don’t necessarily miss the birthday parties and the streamers. Maybe some of us do. And the gifts have definitely gotten better!! But it just seems that once you’re 20, you’re 22 in no time, and then 25 in even lesser time.

Ofcourse, growing up, like a grown-up Kevin says in Wonder Years, happens in a heartbeat. And these are the years when you do the things that really matter. Which is why I don’t exactly want to dwell here, on the over-arching feeling of “being old” or “getting older”. I’m sure most people experience it. So yes, songs and movies of our youth have become classics. And the styles we wore have now almost been labelled vintage. But I don’t mind these things as much. I quite have a fascination to 90s fashion and I feel that a contemporary twist to it makes it darling.

What I’ve been pondering significantly about, is a different issue altogether. One that goes beyond growing older. Sometime last year, I was reading Vanity Fair- a story they do every 5 years, where they interview the top young celebrities of the time. The article began on a highly optimistic note heralding the 2007-08 batch as a notch more fabulous than their predecessors based on the events in the world at large. For example, it stated that there was more to discuss with this group of youngsters right from their cell phones (Apple or Blackberry) to their usage of YouTube, Twitter, Face book etc. They called this group “more ambitious” because they lived and excelled in a digital world of globalised everything, which basically made their work a lot harder. Or so stated the article. It was fun to read it though.

I didn’t think much of that article until a few days later, when, while reading another article, this time in the New York Times, I came across something which I was in blissful ignorance of. The NY Times article was one about popular culture and society, and it stressed on the icons of each generation – Generation X, Y, and Z.

Confession: Now, I must mention here, that I wasn’t entirely clued into this generation labelling concept. All I was aware of was that Winona Ryder and Reality Bites are Generation X icons, and since I watched them on screen during my adolescence, I conveniently assumed that I belonged to the same generation. I have always been discreetly proud of the age I’ve grown up in. Sure, I would’ve loved to be a teenager during the late 1960s and attend Woodstock ’69, but other than that, I feel the 90s more than over-compensated for this lack. Generation X got icons like Kurt Cobain, Ryder, River Phoenix etc. And Oasis. Not too many things get better than that. And so I was content being a Generation Xer.

And such was the scope of my understanding of this concept; when I read in the NY Times article that, Generation X referred to people born in the 1970s!! While Generation Z includes the Twittering group of youngsters that Vanity Fair proudly proclaimed to be the vindicating, all-conquering sorts, Generation Y (which I fall into) are the people born in the 80s aka the pre-YouTube, pre- Apple/Blackberry-touch-phone-war youngsters which Vanity Fair might have equally ceremoniously interviewed in the summer of 2002-03 and some of whom are now engaged in non-limelight hogging pursuits.

I remember feeling so unusually disoriented after reading the NY Times article. Not only was my pretty bubble burst, but it turned out the article made a helium-voiced mockery of my entire generation!! If Generation Y didn’t own Ryder and also wasn’t blessed with nimble-fingered texting speeds, what then is our legacy?

It’s a question that has been bothering me a fair bit. Not to sound too dejectedly pessimistic, but I felt a little betrayed by the lack of star power my generation has accumulated.

But I’ve thought it through and that’s when it occurred to me..

Every generation probably feels the weight of its burden as only that generation can.

The wonder doesn’t lie in being the star and being in the limelight alone. It lies in the fact that, each Generation Yer has been the right age to appreciate the right kind of things. We have been sandwiched between two “path-breaking generations” – or so they say; but we have the fortitude and good taste to appreciate art and music and cinema and sports at all the correct ages – all the levels of growing up.

Unlike kids these days, I’m glad we got to watch shows like Oshin, Blossom, and the Hans Christian Anderson fairy-tale adaptations on DD2 when we were kids. Lion King released here when Generation Y children were just the right age to appreciate splendour and majesty in a feline family in the Serengeti. I remember I took up listening to Oasis right at the time you get over boy-band crushes and start listening to brilliant music. If I were a Generation Z kid, I wouldn’t have had the pleasure to watch American Beauty and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the big screen. Steffi Graf played during the 90s, as if specifically to inspire a Generation Y child. The books, the movies, the music, the sports – all things bright and beautiful, from the 50s and 60s, stayed so over the years to still be appreciated by Generation Y. Classics remain always, and new technologies come and fade; it’s cool to be seeped within old lore and vintage, while also on the threshold of emerging new ideas.

We’re the generation that reflects the star power back. Some of us wear rose-tinted shades during the day, while some others gaze into the night-sky with wonder. But overall, we engage in less tiresome yet more fulfilling activities – sprawled on the grass under the starlight, far away from the glare of city lights and hoardings – watching, learning, admiring.

Questions:

(1) Tetris does feel older than 25. Do you agree?

(2) Do you think it’s crazy to travel sardine-like on a crowded bus? If yes, do you think the author is just plain crazy or does youth do that to even the sanest of people?

(3) How many of you miss grand birthday parties of childhood and the streamers spelling out your name on the walls. Pray do tell.

(4) Do you agree that “growing up happens in a heartbeat”?

(5) Do you like ‘The Wonder Years’? If yes, who’s your favourite character on the show?

(6) Is it terribly ignorant to not be aware of popular culture phenomena like Generations X, Y, Z etc.?

(7) Have you ever talked with a mouthful of helium? If yes, what was the first thing you said? Would you want to try it again?

(8) On a scale of 1 to 10, how pretentious is it of the author to write a post based on a couple of Vanity Fair and New York Times articles? You might be going down in the author’s graces with brutally honest answers. But do continue.

(9) Is there any reason for this sentence to be in bold and in italics – Every generation probably feels the weight of its burden as only that generation can? It appears in the post immediately after something “occurs” to the author. Would you kindly give reasons for both Yes/No answers.

(10) What is funnier/ nicer – the author saying she watched Hans Christian Anderson fairytale adaptations on DD2 OR the fact that she would want to watch American Beauty in the theatres? Hidden option number 3: That she had a boy-band crush?

Bonus Question:

Which style from the 90s would you love to see make a comeback? Or is there any 90s style you still maintain?

“Moving winters” and a Desmond Morris hangover.

Let me introduce you to a strange observation. It started with the Famous Five. When Enid Blyton’s famous bunch first entered my life, they brought along with them lovely adventures, the rolling English countryside, ginger beer and scones, and most of all “moving winters”.

Moving/shifting winters – The shifting image of a cold chilly winter and cool breezes that you get, just by reading a book or watching a movie. It conjures up a reflection of hazy, lazy, crazy winter afternoons where the skies are overcast, you can smell apples and cinnamon in the air, the wind blows to a constant degree stinging your eyelashes and everything in your vision shifts a little bit.

It often occurs with regard to winters..hence the term “moving winters”. Its beautiful..this feeling.

With the famous five, although their adventures were almost always during summer holidays, there were times for example when, on cold summer days, they would be stranded on a lighthouse with gales of wind rushing over the sea, when the howling of the wind summons up dangerous and rough ideas of pirates and shipwrecks, and always – these “moving winters” – gathering up the sea foam in mists, curling from under locked doors and making you shiver while reading!!

I remember reading the ‘Cider House rules’ by John Irwing, the description of New England and the snowy winters. The first clear summing up of the setting – St. Cloud’s, Maine – “..was as constant in St. Cloud’s as the fog, the mist, the humidity that overhangs inland Maine in the damp cold of its long, wet, snowed-in winters”. There is a blue tinge to the description; the images literally seem like they’re shifting seamlessly into other incoherent images. You can actually “feel” the cold and the mist..the motion of the wind..the glaze in the characters’ eyes.

And there it was all over again – a winter that moves..shifts formlessly in obscure ways, distinct from the earth only because of the blue hues that envelop it; that are so drastically different from the browns and greens of the surrounding world.

In Mumbai, we don’t have winters. We don’t even get cold weather. The closest it has come to winter has been the recent onslaught of chill weathers in January/February that tends to grip this city in a cold clasp and makes Mumbaikers rejoice in the fact that ‘icy’ co-exists along with ‘searing hot’ and ‘downpour’ in the city’s climatic vocabulary. The notion of bitterly cold evenings and frosty mornings is somewhat lost to an average Mumbaiker.

Which is essentially why I’ve been fascinated by winters and the foggy illusions it seems to create. One might draw an analogy between the “moving winters” and desert mirages – because it captures a similar kind of picture in your mind’s eye – extreme weather and the movement of objects/thoughts or the presence of non-existent things.

Okay. I seem like the only one who feels this. Imagines the movement of weather!! And it’s not like it’s a storm or a hurricane for god’s sake, for everyone to see. It’s a silent, unassuming winter that I imagine to be moving, shifting!! Good lord!!

Illustration:

I was reading ‘The Story Girl’ by L.M. Montgomery; in one of the chapters, the kids are waiting to watch the spectacle that would be made by the burning of potato stalks, on the hill farms just before spring. The illustration for this in my mind was – I remembered a time when, as a little girl, I used to go watch the holi bonfire in our neighbourhood and the exquisiteness of it all in the warm, slightly cool night, and the rush I felt while collecting the wood for the bonfire. There was something so wild about it; I don’t know whether it was the stories regarding it (that the fire was destroying evil) or the childhood joy in staying up and out so late; or the nomadic feeling one gets while searching for firewood late in the night; or the coming anticipation of the rangpanchami the next day (although I’ve never ever liked the colours and the rowdiness of holi).

What, oh what, was so wildly fantastic about the experience?

And tadaaa – there it was – the weird feeling of ‘chilly moving winter’ one sometimes gets when looking over the haze that the bonfires and their smoke, make. And I realized why winters seem like they move/shift. The molecules in the air do definitely move; but the impression of a ‘moving winter’ is created because you tend to feel a certain restlessness within yourself which is heightened during winter.

The restlessness to act; to perform; to break away from the conventional wisdom of just lazing. I tried to analyze why this was – don’t I love to wrap myself in a duvet and have hot chicken soup or hot chocolate during winters? Doesn’t almost everyone dislike the idea of having to get up early on cold winter mornings and shower and go off to work or study, wishing you’d be snowed in? Don’t winters always seem like the worst times to journey off on adventures? Didn’t all the hobbits wish they were in the warm and safe confines of their hobbit holes, near hearth and pantry instead of trudging along in the snowy winters of Middle Earth? Aren’t summers the time to go trekking, go on long trips, and be the active sort? What restlessness then? It didn’t all make sense.

And then the dim-witted feeling seeped through me – duh, we’re humans, not bears! The lazy, hazy winter feelings are fine for a slumbering animal whose only job is to wait around with jaws open, to make meals of the salmon jumping upstream. But we humans are attuned to being more proactive about things than bears, for certain. And so the soothing thought that maybe, just maybe I’m not too crazy after all. Maybe winters do really seem like they move/shift. Maybe in the midst of perfectly baked warm cookies and the perfectly seasoned soup and the perfectly lit bonfire, we wish within ourselves to wake up from our snoozes and go do something. Maybe the restlessness is the consequence of contrasting feelings within us – yearning for home and hearth and pantry like the hobbits, or setting out for newer adventures in harsh cold weather also like the hobbits. I can’t decide what exactly I feel at this opportune moment. I shall pretend to be in colder climes enjoying the dreamy, blissful, blue, moving/shifting winters – wishing for adventure; and once adventuring, covet the nostalgic delightfulness of a warm home and a crackling fireside.