This December

Well, this whirwind of a month seems to be drawing to a close, and with it the old year is yielding itself to the new. The nip in the air is slowly waning, and Winter will soon have to renounce its strong-hold on Weather Kingdom. Oh what a month this has been, with weddings and family re-unions, loss and love.

My father lost his aunt, something which grieved us deeply. One very beautiful and profound quotation by Cicero repeated itself in our minds (De Senectute)...a person who leaves the world at an advanced age is akin to a ship coming into harbor, a ship which has finished a long and eventful voyage on a wide, wide sea...like a ripe fruit, which has fallen to the ground, having spent its allotted hours on the tree of life. It made me realize that we are all living on borrowed time, and hence life is really too short to be taken too seriously...And life should ideally be a celebration of just Living, and Breathing, Exploring and Loving, Discovering and Learning and Re-learning.

Then there were the Weddings. So many people we know decided to tie the Nuptial Knot this month. Some of them were barely a year older than me. This frightened me. When did I grow up enough to have friends who were getting married? Did the years just slip me by, like the brisk morning breezes which we miss when we over-sleep? "Where have all the" years "gone?" Or have they gone anywhere at all? Don't they simply accumulate, like chapters of a book, till we reach the end of our journey on Earth? In that case, aren't all our lives books, some written, some read, and others forgotten? I remember a Time, a long spell back, when an invitation to a wedding party simply meant shiny new clothes, gorgeous lights and fragrant flowers, and a hearty, delicious repast. It still conjures all these things in my mind, but now I ponder upon other things as well...I hope each couple will embark on years of magnificent togetherness, kinship, and will support and endlessly love each other through their days and nights. Now I look for emotions hidden in the eyes of each couple, happiness mixed with apprehension, strain-mixed-with elation, joy diluted by irrational misgivings...The excited voices all around, the hopes, the expectations which hover upon the couple, the superficial fun the children have, running around and wildly yelling, just as we used to do, unaware of the loftiness of the decision, the risks, and all the wonderful chances the couple who have decided to get married, have taken.

December is a month of Possibilities. I say that because I feel that Cold weather affords a lot of possibilities. Vacations are pleasanter and life yearns to be exploited and explored. We took a little trip to Shantiniketan, a sacred haven still, for Poetry aNd Peace. I might be being fanciful, but I feel that Poetry takes a tangible form in this lovely place. I can feel it in the wind which whips my face in the early mornings, I can feel it in the slight shivers I feel when Dusk Descends, I can feel it each time the Rickshaw takes a sudden turn, and my eyes are accosted by a sudden spray of roses, a sudden bunch of flowers, a sudden burst of trees. I can see it in the Crimson-Orange Sunset, I can hear it in the music of the Bauls at the Baul-Mela, and I breathe it every time I walk in to Rabindranath Tagore's Garden...oh, he has flung Poetry in the air, enough to stir the most prosaic of souls, or so I feel.
And then there IS the warmth of being at home, being surrounded by what is the most precious feeling on Earth: Unconditional Love, Absolute Love, Family Love...feeling warm from Love in a cold Winter month beats consuming a spoon of Medicinal Brandy for warmth, if I may use that metaphor.
And then there are my friends, friends who love me, and friends who I love, those who let me be the way I am and spoil me with their love...friends who I have known for years, who have all grown up with me, we've been through trials and tribulations, but have stuck it out...and that's what counts...
Life is all about making connections, ranging from mental, physical, emotional to SPIRITUAL...
And then, sigh, there is Gilbert Blythe in my lovely Anne books, and the one I still await...still amorphous, still elusive...I wish L.M. Momtgomery would write out this chapter of my life for me...<3
Yesterday we made our annual visit to the Little Village we visit, and I had the most splendid of times, I renewed my kinship with The Bicycle, and I cycled around the "gram," like a girl possessed...and now am bravely facing the inevitable consequences of sore muscles and aching appendages.

A Wintry Morning.

I am back in my room. I am back to the clickety-clackity sounds of my old lap top. My Window is open behind me, looking upon the Bridge, on which I used to travel to and from my College cum University. My room has welcomed me back with an ease which belies my absence.
The weather is just as it used to be...I never want to miss this evasive chill, the mist-laden mornings, the honey-tinted afternoons, which is really almost akin to a turned-over jar of honey being slowly emptied of its sunshiny goldenness. And then the sudden Darkness, the too-early evenings, the nippiest nip in the air....ooh.
And the best thing about being back is JUST being back. It feels like I've never left. All my little idiosyncracies pounce back upon me as soon as I return, the ones which I though I had lost forever. My books are yearning to be read another time, note pads wish to be scribbled in, or so I'd like to believe. And stories are spinning in my head, unwoven thoughts which wish to be woven into a narrative.
And then there are Weddings to attend, re-unions to attend. oH the pleasures they afford.
Here is my room, in which I had spun together the Golden threads of ambition. SorRY fot the constant reference to Golden, but it is SUCH a golden DAY TODAY. In this room had I pain-stakingly solved SAT and subsequently GRE papers. The very walls will testify the many application essays which I had written, the tests I'd studied for. The musical notations which I had tried to make sense of still waft silently across the room, and hang in stillness in the many corners and nooks. Ech piece of furniture has a fun anecdote to share. Like the table which had to be dragged up four flights because it could not possibly be fit into the lift, the wardrobe, built under my mum's supervision, which took days and days to take shape, the red revolving chair which had fallen with me, and had to be repaired, being quite indispensable.
The sounds of the garage, which used to annoy me in the past, have ceased to irk me now. They re-assure me in their steadfast, unshaken presence, something still unchanged in this ever-changing world. Now, that sounds quite bizarre. Hmmmm. And my Purple-Pink Quilt, which I love so much is still so snug and warm, and rosysmelling.
I love the sofa upholstery tooooooo....the warm red and beige stripes which spell HOME.