Letter to Winter-Fun

Hey there!

Its been quite sometime that we have spoken, and it is a seasonal blessing to greet you. I see you around often though, in photographs where young people claim you in a caption. I see you in similar pouting faces, with similar straight hairstyles in similar costumes of glitz. I also see how they try to net you in a click, a vain click. You do not seem the same fun I had known. Definitions have not just expanded now, they have changed. You are so full of shimmer that you blind me. I speak to you out of a concern for the celebration of winter and the approaching dates that are to be blocked by party throwers and attenders alike. Me? I am the perennial party pooper, thank you.

You know having you around meant unending giggles in girlish circles of gossip, and planning a picnic and just stealing a nap in the middle of the day on the terrace or the backyard, under the shade, kissed by winter sunshine, surrounded by oranges and their fruity smell soaking it. You meant holidays to enjoy the same, where I would experiment with many fruits and nuts and how I would chop and shape them on a given day to experiment with a daily cuisine. You meant beating the coffee mix till such time that it turned white and the neighbours turned deaf. You meant many postponed birthdays and many cakes to be had generously and an even more elaborate mushroom spread in an omelet already gooey with cheese. Later you grew along to mean raisins in rum and coke and rum and tap water and rum. And rum in coffee. With people I would love to share the entire list with, or by myself. I always had you anyway!

As much as I despise the very thought of going out to seek you in a crowd of unending, unknown faces, I have loved you oftener. I love the feel of going on a drive with only a fistful for an ice-cream in the middle of the night. I have loved you in steaming hot momos and chilled Thums Up in miserable cold Delhi nights and driving back after a cozy dinner only with friends in an overrated Calcutta winter evening. I have embraced you all through in Bhutan in longing whispers and aching sparkle. I had you in my pocket in Assam, always. I thus cannot blame myself when I do not understand how different and deprived this generation is. Of course, they would differ. I can only think of a wild thing like this because there is a nip in the air -- I wish you return to the youth for once, for once in the way you have stayed in me. Would they be able to comprehend the difference? I cannot say. But I wish they know you and then claim to have you in your essence.

In soups and socks, in jars and jackets, in simplicity and eternity.

I love you,

K.