Herald of Spring

Winter is officially over! (What winter?!) Instead of saying “as the days get warmer” I shall say “As the days get hotter”  and we look in bleak trepidation at the

“April is the cruellest month, breeding 

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.”

Remembering Eliot, I digress into the unwelcome future of a hot and humid summer! Now with winter disappearing and spring merging into summer where will we go to escape the heat?

There is a flurry of activity around the area we live in. You can actually feel the hum and energy in the air. The traffic noise is more aggressive and cacophonic than usual. The dichotomy lies in the fact that life is more evident in the intangible and transient atmosphere but the lush green cover on the hill outside the kitchen window is turning brown and barren!

Amidst all these desolate thoughts, I spy a single colorful kite swishing its tail against the gentle summer breeze. There is hope after all!

Society over the years has changed and mutated. Many of us are limited to our virtual societies. Everyone is busy working the whole week and the weekends are meant to unwind. Gone are the days when we would invite friends over for a meal or have an impromptu party. Now every get together is a chore for the house owner where it will be held. After all the menu has to planned- starters, drinks, main course (with veg- non veg!) desert and after dinner liqueur! Expensive and tiring! Festivals meant for social bonding have become a routine, of some group arranging everything, where we go and smile at unknown faces, listen to the latest Bollywood hip shakers, eat a lot of unhealthy food and walk off with a smile at the guard!

I am not here to argue about whether unknown, unproductive and outdated rituals have any meaning in today’s world, I am here to state that the supposedly known, productive and “cool” rituals are absolutely uncool. Any exercise that has no productive output is to touch the nadir of existence. I believe if I sit and stare at a beautiful painting, it is productive as it gives me the pleasure of beholding beauty in all its splendour and kicking my mental consciousness into the first gear of movement- for movement is change and change is existence. So by exercise I don’t mean any physical process of energy and output.

There was an office party on a terrace over which my window looks, for Makar Sankranti, I assume, as I saw many young people trying to fly kites. I remember the tradition of flying kites as a child. The trouble we went to stick the crushed glass on to the thread (to be able to cut off other people’s kites!) Weeks before we would scour the market for the best looking and aerodynamically viable ones. There would be spare ones hidden somewhere if we were at the mercy of a rogue kite flyer. The frustration of not being able to run and throw the kite high enough to launch it. Begging dad to help us out because he was so tall! I hardly see that now days. Is it because we are in a city of concrete jungle? Is it still there in small towns and villages?

I don’t miss those days. I had my day in the sunshine and wind. I only wish the new generation would be able to partake this delicacy as a starter for the party of life.

There are a few kites lazily floating in the sky. Very few and very lazy! I try and find the fliers and cannot see them clearly. I think time has kept its date with me. The kite is like me, lazy and drifting but still tied, to keep me in check. One day some rogue glass-sharpened string will cut into me and allow me to reach for the sun.

Makar Sankranti- a new beginning!