When I was younger I yearned for winters. Summers bothered me for the heat and dust but winters were supposed to be an antidote to these searing afternoons and a morning that started too soon. The nights were too short, actually not holding enough hours for a nightful of erotic slumber.
But now the winters cast a gloom over the day as the sun fails to make an appearance, wanting to break away from the clouds or the fog or the smog that hangs like a stifling prospect. It is not really the long nights that hold the terror of gloom, but the preceding even longer evenings that descend too soon, even before the day has seen its adolescence blooming into full blown youth. It feels time and again that the chances of the day reaching its full potential have been robbed or stealthily taken away, as if it has not been allowed to reach its full realisation. And then, as the evenings encroach upon the afternoon, the sheet of darkness begins to spread more and more to erase from sight the next fourteen hours.
The nights are too long, and those who are denied the luxury of full sleep just count the moments, the endless moments for the lid of gloom to be raised a little. But moments are hours that pass with the lazy foreboding, the tone of the season. And the sight of the sun being there and not strong enough to warm the body is a scary one. It is like help is nearby but does not prove to be enough or strong enough for redressal. It is the coagulation of the body, the blood thickens and becomes turgid and refuses to flow through the veins, the sinews as if tightly bound together, knots that refuse to unravel. Who is going to unfold the cringing or frigid knot that tightens further and further, and does not open itself to be unloosed with the slightest of touch? Yes, it has to be the touch of warmth, the touch of sunlight as it powers its potential to move things.
The sunlight is only a reminder of its strength and the ability to be a catalyst but it falls slantingly, weakly. It could be the delight of a painter viewing his palette against that winter light to be splashed on the canvas, the mellowness of it renders all, the lines lose their sharpness and blurs with the background. But what is required is the distinctness of sharpness to tell the flow of blood from tangled sinews, the life that runs through the body to revive and open its every pore.
The brightly coloured chrysanthemums and the marigolds in the gloom brighten the landscape, if not the horizon. But then it is all a contrast to the tent of grey stretched across the sky. In summers the flowers sing from the same hymn sheet but in winters it is in direct conflict as the two look askance at each other. Contrast was more appealing to the senses, but now it is jarring, out of synch with the natural gloom of the season.
One of the joys of winters was to watch a cricket match on the near village green of the Gymkhana Grounds in Bagh-e-Jinnah. The early afternoons were an ideal time as the shadows just started to lengthen against a freshly mowed grass. Then, suddenly, the sun dipped behind the huge trees and its sprawling branches to dim and thicken the shadows to force the curtains being drawn on the day.
So very British, minus the sipping beer, lounging in a saggy chair, languorously, but more than compensated by shots of fresh orange juice and the hot pathuras. Alas with no international cricket played in Pakistan, the entire focus, shifting to the cold mathematical replays on television screens against the unknown artificial greens of the Middle East. It is not only cricket, minus its atmospherics, that has robbed winters of its brightest attraction.
Or on the lush of the fairways as the rolling green loses its way in the thickets and the intimidating overhanging branches. Playing golf in the semi lit hours in a fruitless search of the ball on dew-drenched surface just leaves a trail of soggy footprints that gradually creep up the feet to the legs, yearning for dryness. The repressed smells as against the heavy ones of the summers as it dips into the autumn to define our season.
The repressed aroma of winters struggles to find olfactory fullness. The trees shed their leaves and the bare branches are the bones jutting out, like the skeletal remains that only expose the insides without the cover of flesh or the lushness of foliage. Fortunately, due to the great variety of trees, and foliage, not all shed their leaves but only a few, just too many to view.
And then the dry leaves on the ground, writhingly twisted, add to the touch of winter. Further it with the stale smell of these rotting leaves, withered without life, just rumbling against the wind that chills to the bones. The grass, too, in the process of dying and the bare branches having lost everything. This denuded sight paints a picture of misery and emptiness.
All aches and pains return except the heartache. Once being hit by a ball, once having a bone fractured, the ugly fall, the laceration of the muscles, the dull uneasiness of the joints, all come for a payback visit. As if the principal debt has been paid but the interest on it remains to be cleared.
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Everything or most come to a standstill and it is a wait for the spring to arrive for the rhythm of life to pulsate again. Most stop to grow and sprout and the sprouts are as if muffled. It is a wait for movement, a wait for change. Winter is a long wait, and waiting is not the most fulfilling of experiences. Meeting is.