Winters. Sigh.

I love days like these. Winters in the north are always beautiful. Lazy rays of the sun parting the clouds and filtering through them, greyness all around. There’s smog and a haziness that lifts my spirit immediately. Winter is the time for munching on truckloads of ripe fruits – apples and oranges and custard apples and water chestnuts and cherries and dates. It’s the time to eat nuts of all kind – almonds and walnuts and cashews – that warm the body, similar to the effect rum and brandy have in cold locations. It is the time to fill up with steaming tea or coffee or hot chocolate. It is time to bring out those coats and blazers and sweaters and woollen socks and mufflers and gloves and leggings. Winters remind me of my childhood, those vacations when I would spend the day comfortably tucked up in bed, with the mother catering to my every need. Mugs of adrak wali chai, with white wisps of delicious smoke wafting from them. Baskets of fruits washed and ready to be eaten. Great bowls of soup of every kind – mixed and tomato and chicken and onion. Everything cheesy and delicious. The terrible taste of the tomato soup, which I hated, but which the mother insisted I drink up as it would help in making me healthy and red. Sitting in the verandah on a cream-and-olive-green straw ‘chataai’, with my pet dog for company, she lazing in the sun as well, resting her pointed snout on her front legs and letting the annoying flies bother her at times. Basking in the strong sun. Chatting leisurely about school, or playing board games. Ludo and Scrabble and Game of Life and Scotland Yard. Cuddling up in fat and comfortable ‘razais’, gallivanting around in an oversized sweatshirt on the top and a pair of cotton shorts in the bottom, with colourful socks and floaters adoring my feet. Huddling around with mother and father and the brother around a small fire. Dad would love to kindle one of those and create a cosy atmosphere in the house. We had a biggish earthen bowl at home that he would fill with small pieces of coal, laying them lovingly on a bed of grey sand. Then he would stoke them, while we enjoyed cracking peanuts around it in a circle, and eating them with green ‘dhaniya ki chutney’. Those were good times. No, great times. I have always loved the chill and beauty that winter brings.

Song of the Day: "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" (Oasis)