By Ananya S Guha
Autumn reminds of winding ways to school. The steps then the tennis courts, then the narrow paths, rustling leaves. Golden hues. Autumn meant many things. The second term exams. The school concert. The Puja Holidays.
Autumn also meant nearing winter holidays. There was a quiescence and a creepy feeling that winter is knocking at the door of content. For after all, didn’t winter mean long long holidays? The cricket bat swishing and the sun redolent of oranges? Sun, oranges melted into one whole image – winter. The fire place would blaze in the evening. The hurly burly crackling fire. Orange peels glistening. Daylight glistening. Nights dark, cold and starry.
Autumn brings with it a glare of the past, a monolith of past and present. Rekindling the past, autumn anticipates a cold winter. But the winter season has changed they say. Hardly as cold as the past. Look it’s October now, yet its quite warm. Disbelief! that climatic changes have brought changes that one could not have imagined in yester years of childhood.
The child with grey trousers and green blazer was simply in an uniform – a school uniform. Memory impinges upon the child’s mind tramples roads of discovery. Shifts, Remaking, ‘unmaking’.
Let winter come and shatter all mirages. Then only will the child be awake, reliving the fortuitous past.
