Friends from Bangalore called to say they were freezing. By the city’s standards, 13 degrees minimum temperature will put you in that psychological zone. For the likes of us currently in Kolkata, it created a warm condescending glow in being able to reply that we were managing with sub-10 degrees. But the glow disappeared and made us shiver in turn when we talked to our daughter in Delhi who said she was before the heater warming her hands and feet as much as she could before going to bed to tide over another night of 3 degrees minimum or less. We are all passing through the coldest winter we can remember in a long time and I am loving it the way I have always welcomed the cold.
North Europeans flock to Spain or Italy, depending on who is how well off, to make the best of the summer and the sun, to come back to grey skies and be able to flaunt their tan. The celebration of winter in India is partly determined by how well-heeled you are and how well-stocked is your almirah with woolens. The good thing about being a bit over the hill is that old clothes and woolens sit well on you and nobody bats an eyelid at jackets with lapels cut to styles that were the rage in the sixties or thereabouts and double-breasted blazers.
I was able to get an early taste of this year’s robust winter when we went to spend a weekend at Santiniketan, putting to good use the retreat of a friend. The air was as clear as it was crisp. In the misty half light of the early morning, the little railway station of suburban Prantik made a good picture postcard, and the walk down the embankment of the canal was redolent with the smell of dew on the red Birbhum earth, released by a slowly rising sun. We tried to satisfy our robust appetite with the vegetables that were brought to the kitchen straight from the backyard, even as we spent most of the daylight hours in semi-stupor in the sun amidst the roses and chrysanthemums that created a riot in the front yard.
The great thing about this winter is that both in the east as well as in the north, it has been reasonably free (except for one patch) of dense, numbing fog that throws your travel plans out of gear and lands you in Lucknow instead of Delhi, much as would happen in a modern children’s story where a pilot loses his way by taking a wrong turn and brings you to a land with different-looking children. I remember the weekend over a decade ago in Delhi when we wanted to escape the gloom and clamminess of the fog, and took to the highway but couldn’t make it to Jaipur the first day, so dense was the fog.
One great prize in winter when one was young was being allowed to stay a little longer in bed, the indulgence heightened by the comfort under the quilt. As I have grown older, I have discovered a new plus in winter. The morning walk has to compulsorily start early most of the year as it gets too hot for comfort once the sun is out. But in winter, you start early to give yourself a prize. The sharp cold tingles those parts of the body that will not be covered and there is a sense of victory over the elements as you warm up with the walking and beat back the cold. The stray dogs wait patiently before the tea stalls for the first customers to throw a few biscuit bits towards them and the only people on the street who look forlorn are the children, bundled in woolens and out of homes, being accompanied by grownups to the bus stop where the pickup for school will come.
Great as the fog-free, sunny daylight hours are, the traditional plus of winter is the added nip it gives to the hours after dark. Quite simply, the liquor tastes more congenial, you are able to hold more of it and there is no reproachful hangover the morning after. If you relish your liquor in normal times, this weather has been tailor-made to give an added zing to it. So, you do not grudge the poor folks who work up little twig fires by the roadside when you cannot have a fireside experience in your apartment. If God made liquor for a bit of superior pleasure for mortals, then He must be in a particularly good mood to send down an above-average winter to heighten that pleasure.
By far the best part of this winter for me has been those few occasions — far too many, says the wife — when I have coaxed a friend to join me on the lawn of the rowing club that has occupied a corner of the Lakes in Kolkata for over a hundred years, with the sun on the back and the draught beer in front. I cannot make up my mind where the flowers are better — at the club or the friend’s retreat or the Freedom Park next to the Victoria Memorial. This marvelous winter is a freak, they say, a result of climate change. It will be more than made up by extra hot weather which will be the fallout from the global warming. But right now, the sun through the window that warms my back as I balance the laptop on my knees gives no premonition of hard times to come.