Winter's Tale

Many words have been attributed to winter: cold, dark, dreary, fruitless, death-like...pleasant. In fact, winter derives its virtue from the context in which it prevails. What is dreadful to many comes as a blessing to the blazing tropics.

Winter may be a curse for all those starved, listless faces, who would wish for the Happy Prince’s swallow to pluck off and drop leaves of gold on them!

Winter may be an inspiration for many like Robert Frost, to write enduring verses on Stopping by woods on a snowy evening, admiring the lovely, deep and dark surroundings, at the cost of a poor horse’s perplexity!

Winter is when a Johnsy, in her morbid fancy might connect the falling of the last leaves to the remaining days of her sordid life.

While most trees reach out to the heavens, stretching their dying arms, the more blessed birches, firs, pines, spruces and conifers enjoy their evergreen status.

Birds fly away to warmer lands, leaving behind perhaps a fanciful swallow, in love with a reed, who takes shelter at the feet of a grand piece of sculpture! 

For some their favourite things come to be the snowflakes that stay on their noses and eyelashes, while others are forced to stay indoors, in the warmth of their hearth.

The Frost performs its secret ministry, unhelped by any wind, leaving a poet to his solitude, which suits abstruser musings. Silent icicles quietly shine in the moonlight, and calmness “disturbs and vexes meditation with its strange / And extreme silentness”, as Coleridge says.

Many become victims of hypothermia, while others find solace in the arms of their loved ones; or the comfort of a jacket containing feathers or fleece, sheared off creatures, who hardly get a share of the profits made by the sellers of winter wear! The less privileged ones have to make do with a roadside fire – rubbing their hands, as the glowing embers lie at the mercy of the North Wind. Robin Hoods take care to collect blankets and quilts which have become useless to the rich but will now be useful to the poor. 

A winter evening gets adorned most magnificently on the day when  about two millenia ago, a divine child was born in a manger. Socks get filled up with gifts from parents who play proxy to Santa Claus! Meals of ducks filled with sages and onions get served at homes where they cannot afford turkeys. Ebenezer Scrooge lets his guard down and finally, takes to the path of love.

The inhabitants of the frozen Hebrides eagerly wait for the call of the cuckoo, the harbinger of spring. Snow, Frost, North Wind and Hail dance to their hearts’ glory, in the gardens of men, selfish or kind. Winter seems to have no ending for Snow Queen Elsa or the Selfish Giant, while scientists working in the Poles dread the melting of the ice caps owing to global warming.

Many animals hibernate ; The squirrels take a sabbatical from their nutty jobs! However, Keats knows that the cricket keeps the poetry of earth alive: 

"On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,

The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills."

   Donning their favourite winter gear, Kolkata longs for its short wintry spell. Kolkata

   wakes up to the warm slurp of a cup of tea,  relishes the syrupy goodness of nolen

   gur, leisures away at picnics and welcomes winged guests from faraway lands,

   celebrating winter in all its pleasantness. Amidst all this, one stays hooked on to

   social networking sites, waiting for a LIKE on a post that says: Winter is

   here, specially when one has nothing better to do!

   Winter is therefore a paradox – a subtle blend of pleasure and pain, without which

   the cycle of seasons just would not rhyme. If I may translate the words of Tagore,

   As the winter zephyrs sway the gooseberry boughs,

   The quivering leaves are shed in graceful cadence

   Depriving the tree of her verdure…

   But only that which we let go can be restored.

   When shall I be as dauntless as nature, and let loose all my ties?

    Remembering : Oscar Wilde, Robert Frost, S.T. Coleridge, Charles Dickens, William Wordsworth, John Keats, P.B. Shelley, Tagore, The Sound of Music, and of course, William Shakespeare...