Refuel

It is December!

Winter is in our minds. Nolen Gur sweets (if you know what it means), peas kachori the Bengali style with well garnished potato curry have certainly made its way to kitchens of many who permanently resides in the city of joy or carry a pinch of culinary taste from eastern India. Bored with the social media clips of big fat weddings, was flipping through old files the real ones reflecting on the month named December. It meant the month we got promoted to the next grade in early school days. It had a sense of fear and joy of new, well blended.

The homely cat with a big fat tail just beneath the brown mountains was marked good in the report card. Yes, that is still in record in my first report card. The cat was purple, mountain was green. No one asked why, what, how. Pastel shades unduly pouring out of the boundaries. That ‘good’ gave me courage to participate in the annual drawing completion hosted by the neighbourhood community club. We were hand few when that started. Got a few prizes (tiffin boxes stuffed with eclairs chocolates …) for exactly couple of years. The weird drawings used to hang from the notice board of the club for months with the badge of “Third Prize”. The club was also evolving. Many more families were nurturing growing kids.

It must have been one such Sunday morning in the month of December. Draped in woolen ware with two sharpened HB pencils, a scented eraser (I called it rubber for long) and a box of pastels reached the same venue. My drawing skills have elevated from domestic pet to the village girl (yes, they had very beautiful looks in Indian fable stories pictured in the Amar Chitra Katha, which I still love to read). Amidst many moments of surprise that I had embraced in life it was one. The auditorium was full. The big lawn on the backside of the club auditorium was half full. Some have settled and some settling. I tried to understand, what are they all here for!

I too settled on the lawn. Made a few friends and shared pastels. My village girl fell much behind the sketches, shades, colours that others had painted. I still recall how I hunted her in the over crowed paintings on the board that had the consolation prizes. We had movie show every Friday and Saturdays in the club. I slowly moved into the dark auditorium and took a chair among many to watch the silver screen. Yes, I subscribed to this channel much before I could consume. The child mind gave way to Amitabh Bachchan on screen – the best gel to forget the lost pride. That is the power of entertainment. Looking back that was my first experience of a game called competition and more so when it grips you all unprepared. The tryst with the pain and the painkiller when one falls behind, stays back. The next winter, I was doing something else as pastels where no more interesting. That is how resolutions shape.

Years later got to experience another flush of colours, yes it was winter once more. Courtesy to SAIL, where my father worked for years, we had houses that had land too. It had a backyard for kitchen garden. And a yard in the front for flowers to bloom. We had a neighbourhood rich of boys. They had sports that had no place for me. Short winter afternoons where meant for gully cricket for them. For me it meant solving maths from O.P. Singhal. It is very recent that I realized it was just by coincidence the diversity quotient of the neighbourhood was skewed. But every coin has two sides, so is for situations. The friends that started entering my life quite unknowingly were books and magazines. To spice it up one such winter afternoon got an opportunity to visit a local nursery to bring back home samplings and seeds. In a sporadic gardening spree picked the axe and the sickle. Mud and water have a smell of its own.

With weeks flipping to month, it was a riot of colours, complete natural - a pleasure to eye and mind. They came forth to give a seasonal dividend and then dried away. It was a period of annual joy. Pursued this cycle till I got a chance to step out from the small town into the metro just to realize land is not free, every square foot is counted. Got occasional taste of gardening later in life though never the landscape that the teenage me enjoyed. They were king size pleasure, one size bigger than watching Muqaddar Ka Sikandar. World is full of diverse friends, entwining them in life is an art. Hobby is a reviler, must have in the gallery of friends. Not all winter looks that bright, but memories do make one feel the warmth!

And now with December half through, Santa packing bags, cake ovens warming up, marigold spouts ready to bloom, calendars fast filling up marking get-together with friends and family, on a lazy noon raising a toast to the silly pain and the priceless joy from good old days of December!

Its time to mark out of office. Cheers!