It was just August the other day. Monsoon was no longer inspiring any longings in me. I was in fact getting tired of imagining myself as the internal Virahini Nayika (the longing heroine) with the dragging of this celebrated Indian season (there is room for more blogs on my obsession with monsoon).
Bengaluru monsoon is very mild. Like a very well mannered child. Never out of the line. It is just seen, never heard or felt really. As I have been more used to the loud, fiery temperament of the Guwahati monsoons, that leisurely begins in March and never really ends, the modesty of the monsoon here bores me out soon.
So in that manner, August was hardly noticed exiting. And now that I see, September is gone too. It was like yesterday that I woke up to those cosy 'Hello September' Instagram posts. Though unlike in the Middle Earth, here in India (most parts that is) autumn or fall season is not very visibly prominent. And yet you cannot miss noticing the subtle slants of the sun shifting south. And suddenly you remember two chatty Lorelai and Rory, walking around Star Hollows with a happy beige and orange backdrop. Yes, yes, another Gilmore Girls fan spotted here.
Mild and mellow evenings paint watery pictures of a visit to a slow neighbourhood, with these adorable whitewashed walls. And maybe quietly swaddling in between two symmetrical, aged houses, will be a quaint little cafe in faded pastels. Cliched, I know. But why not? Isn't the prospect itself comforting enough? Like a nice cup of tea with an old company, and hearty dollops of harmless gossip sugarcoated as nostalgia. What more do you wish, oh fool of the heart!
Speaking of tea, a chanced official appointment recently, required me to visit a popular cafe. It was a balmy afternoon just after a minty shower of drizzle. There was even a smear of rainbow in the sky. Picture-perfect.
I placed an order for a cup of Earl Grey, just after i reached the place and settled by a window-side table. It was my very first cup, a pleasant acquaintance. As the evening progressed zealously, it saw me drinking another of the flavoured tea, and then another one, though this one was English Breakfast, bit bitterish. Cancelled for the recent future then.
The month is ending on a good note, though. Like a Hallmark movie. Leaving me with feel-good thoughts and a hopeful prospects for the rest of the three ber-months. I have picked my last year's broidery project, and have been learning a word or two in French. And so many other slow and comforting things that happened are coming to me now as I sit and type here. Let me keep that for the upcoming blogs.
On that note, leaving you in the company of John Keats, as he writes an Ode To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains, with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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