Tuesday 7 September 2010

Soon enough

Dear Friend,

I hope you are doing well. I hope you are getting all you need and all you want too.
I am sitting outside of my current house, in the backyard, and it's a little chilly. The rain Gods were at doing what they do best today and its wetness is dripping from the trees which border the yard. The drops on the washing lines seem frozen, sparkling from the light which I just put on.

It's been a dead day, if there was such a thing. Nothing seemed to happen, or happen right too for that matter. I missed an interview appointment because I FORGOT! That's no excuse, it's just pathetic. And I have nothing exciting happening which should've prevented me from remembering this detail.

The skies were greyish since morning. You know how much light affects my mood! That is one of the reasons I want to come back home, to India. The land of monsoon and the land of enjoying monsoon! Rain here is just depressing. It carries no romance the Indian monsoon does. The first rain, the smell of the quenched soil, the sudden greenery, the bhajias, the chai..... it has been romanticised enough by all. I need that. I need to feel Nature. We, in India, are so much in tune with the forces of nature. We are celebrate the arrival of each season, we depend on it for so many things. A poor rainfall means food shortage, an untimely one means no mangoes that year. Yellow-hot summers leave us begging for the rains and we wait, wait for the massive force of winds to unleash some upon us. Here, in UK, it's perpetual rain. The summers are short and celebrated only by rushing off to parks and beaches and wearing one layer of clothes. The winter comes soon enough and puts on two layers of cardigans and coats on you again. Then, you put on a heater in the house and live as if nothing has changed from the transition from summer to winter.

I have done just that staying here. Stayed the same. Done nothing radical. Worn my layers of fat and ennui and prayed for the summer to come and melt it off. It was never hot enough. My summer here required some changes to my Indian perceptions. It was hard to think of summer as a pleasant season. Back home, we dread it and wait for the moist monsoon and cool, dry winters. I had to reverse my psyche.

Anyway, like all here, I am just discussing weather. That's one reason I find the British (and I guess most Westerners) shallow. They will spend hours discussing weather but none would ask you the state of your affairs. Your joys and sorrows are your own to experience and you can tell them to a shrink. Thanks for being mine!

I will see you soon enough and thaw out in our land of perpetual summer.

Love,
Swapna.