April

Google made a fool of me yesterday! I clicked on the smell tab and proceeded to try and smell many smells. (Thinking it’s some great technological advance!) I tried and tried; put my nose as close to the screen as I could but though my heart said “I can smell the rose” my cynical mind refused to accept my memory as the truth and refused to believe in Google!  When my teen came home and made me do it again – just to humor her I said I could smell the beach but when she went on to make me smell the rose I couldn't lie and said I couldn't  Only then did she tell me that it was an April fool joke!

In school, April first, was a fun day and most of us at one time or the other has indulged in them! It was fun when we started it and irritating when we had to bear the brunt of it! I remember a classmate whose birthday fell on first April. He had to listen to the clichéd jokes year after year….

There are many theories behind the April fool day’s origin but what seems most sensible to me is Boese’s belief- that April Fools' Day simply grew out of age-old European spring festivals of renewal, in which pranks and camouflaging one's identity are common.

April, all over the western world is seen as a new beginning, it normally ushers in Easter which is a festival of renewal. It brings in the warmth after a long winter and a short spring; it makes the flowers bloom; it brings out the fertility rites in the open- generally it is the month of rejoicing. Yet we have an ironic Eliot saying “April is the cruelest month”; as against Chaucer’s “When April with his showers so sweet….” Both poets have their own reasons for their statements but while Chaucer follows the prototype, we have Eliot going against the grain! If we were to go deep inside both the poems we would realize that both have a different viewpoint than what they are stating. Is that what April is all about?

Confusing us with warmth and sudden cold showers; sometimes snow and sometimes extreme heat, April, in India, is a busy month; it is a harbinger of the extreme heat and discomfort of summer; school children are restless, waiting for it to get over and then the long summer break; families are planning their holidays to cooler climes; the sense of renewal is replaced by a kind of suffocation from which we need to escape.

Think colour and you think of April. All the flowers bloom during this month. Green saplings and shoots are the symbols of spring but full bloomed blossoms, colourful and vibrant are the hues of April. The tangy strawberries leave and augur in the delicious smell of mangoes. The traffic light fruit sellers are the key to my season recognition! From December to mid-march I had been buying strawberries from them. They always start with sixty rupees for the box and end up giving me four boxes for hundred! I am sure they recognize me and play the same game every time. I have never given them more or less than hundred for the four boxes! I have yet to buy mangoes from them, but I shall plan out my bargain strategy after I see what the price of these nectarines is in the super markets!

I can see a lot of water tankers trundling along the dusty roads; so it is the time for water shortage; the maid complains of the long lines for getting drinking water; the small earthen pots with steel glasses are put up on each corner of the road by some good Samaritan. Some people leave bowls of water for the crows, sparrow and doves! The other day a hawk displaced all the birds to drink gulps after gulps of water. The sun is intense, bright and hot. The breeze though is still cool and walking under the shady trees is still a pleasure. I suppose April is blowing hot and blowing cold all the time. It is bipolar!

 Getting slightly baked in my own little glass house I see, hear and feel the joy of people who are  in places of rain and snow and the pain of people who are getting roasted in Hades like environment! I thank my stars that I am neither freezing nor roasting. This does not mean that I am not envious of the people of the rain kingdom or the snow Raj! I am jealous of all the people who have the ‘time and money’ to go for exotic cruises and maybe explore the moon; I envy all those who are ‘rich’ enough to have their own yachts and “me time”; I go green when I see mountaineers and hitch hikers for I know I will never indulge in these pursuits this life time!

When I enter April, my heart beats a wee bit faster; my breath fills in a tad bit swifter and my thoughts rise high into the unknown. It is as if I am behind the bend and something exciting is waiting for me! I am like a little child when it comes to my birth month. I am old and ‘wise’ now yet the excitement has never diminished. I keep threatening I want to die as soon as my responsibilities are over but I wonder if that is true. As the years pass I empathize with the will of living of dying patients. Is it the fear of death or the exhilaration of living that pushes this desire?

Is there anyone there who does not anticipate his birthday as a symbol of renewal and rejuvenation?