Wednesday 7 December 2016

December

December has always been a lovely month for me. It is an amalgam of many sweet things, like, the chilly evenings and mornings, the Christmasy feel in the air, a sense of new beginnings and many others. The image of December that first comes to my mind is the delicate flower of either white, yellow, purple or pink that blooms during this month. Many women in Tamil Nadu string these flowers to adorn their hair. Once when I happened to look out of window here in Goa, I spotted many white December flowers. For few seconds, I wondered whether I was at home or in Goa. These flowers start blooming by mid-November and are sighted till mid-January, till the winter has packed its bags and left, giving way to spring and pongal.

This December and last has added a new set of memories for me to associate with this month - the floods of 2015 and the deaths of 2016. While the chilly evenings still remain, the thoughts are punctuated by the knowledge that people who were part of our collective memory are no longer alive. It will be quite strange when I go home in Chennai with the knowledge that our Chief Minister is no longer there. Sometimes, when bad news of home is heard when one is miles away from home, I guess the impact is slightly deeper. On hindsight, the emotional outburst at the loss of someone who I was not quite familiar with, seems a bit strange, December will always remind me of 'Amma.'

December also brings many other memories of songs, music and imaginations. But then I blame the nip in the air for those melancholic thoughts. Sometimes melancholy is sweeter than joy; The knowledge that the melancholia was once a lovely page of memory brings sweet joy.

Ah!

"All in the saddle we spend Christmas Day, / Driving the cattle over snow covered plains. / All of the good gifts given today, / Ours is the sky and the wide open range.…"

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