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Coping with winter

Coping with winter
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By: K S S Pillai

Though Christmas is not far off, winter has not yet shown its rigorous form in South Gujarat, where I live. The night temperature has begun to drop slowly, a warning to take out the winter clothes and blankets from the cupboards and spread them in the sunrays for a couple of days.

When I hear the feeble knocking of winter on my bedroom door, I keep my sweater, woollen cap, gloves and blanket near me while going to sleep. The air-conditioner is kept working for some time immediately after I put off the lights, and the speed of the ceiling is changed often, ultimately switching it off.

Here, the temperature plummets only when the cold wind starts blowing from the north for about a week at a time. At night, I hear the loud whimpering of stray dogs without proper shelter. I enjoy sitting in the warm morning sun, absorbing a large quantity of free vitamin D while drinking cups of steaming tea and going through the day’s newspapers that announce the minimum and maximum daily temperatures of major cities.

During my childhood, the winter season was pleasant in my native village in Kerala. The coldest month was January when even trees were supposed to freeze.  All family members would get up before sunrise and sit around bonfires that used twigs, dry leaves, and pieces of paper as fuel.

Mango trees would start donning bunches of flowers, spreading their aroma around. Nobody wore woollen clothes except the family members of those serving in the armed forces. They used to bring woollen clothes and blankets from their places of posting in the north, and distribute them among relatives and close friends.

In the 1960s, I worked in the new buildings of the LIC Divisional Office at Indore in Madhya Pradesh. As the winter months were very cold, we used to have several fire-pots in the vast halls with burning coal.

Later, in Gujarat, women making sweaters and other winter clothes using colourful balls of woollen threads were a common sight at homes and workplaces well before the advent of winter, but they have done a vanishing act. There also used to be clusters of stalls where Tibetans used to sell winter clothes, but they have also disappeared after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Simla and Kashmir were the favourite destinations of Hindi filmmakers to shoot scenes where the heroes and heroines, donning woollen dresses, caps, and large sunglasses threw snowballs at one another.

The films also showed snow falling, trees laden with snow on their leaves, and white carpets of snow on top of houses, cars and other vehicles. During the winter, the capital of the state of Jammu and Kashmir would shift to the city of Jammu to protect the law-makers from severe cold.

My neighbours, settled in Canada, come back for a couple of months in the winter. They say the temperature in their host country sometimes goes down to below minus 40 degrees Celsius. Roads with thick carpets of snow are frequently shoved with machines to make them navigable.

The Arctic circle is the coldest part of the world, followed by Siberia in Russia. It is said convicts are sent to Siberia to work under the supervision of heavily clad guards. I have heard of Eskimos living in their dome-shaped houses called igloos made of ice and animals like the snow bear with a camouflage provided by nature.

Mother nature has provided sheep in cold countries with a thick coat of fur that retains heat. The greedy men shave off the whole coat immediately after the winter and sell the wool, leaving the poor animals without a shred of wool on their bodies.

The winter season is considered the best for rejuvenating one’s health by undergoing Ayurvedic treatments and consuming nutritious food. Many foreigners come to Kerala for this treatment and go back, showing off their new-found vigour.

A welcome feature of the season is that my grocer, selling crushed black sesame mixed with several health-boosting herbs, presents me with a packet of it every year, free of cost.

(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to ‘The Kashmir Vision’, his articles and short stories have appeared in various national and international publications)

 

 

 

 

 

 


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