October

October is a tricky month. Because it has that feeble hint that winter has arrived. But only in the evenings. When it gets dark earlier than before. And the streets light up surprising you every other day. Because you tend to forget that time has moved on, from the other end of the year, from the neater months of March and May to this month that seems to play all the tricks.

There is a faintly irritating fragrance in the air, that gave a migraine to some woman in a book you read long ago. That irritating fragrance is of a certain bloom in a certain tree that we never could trace. But every October, there is this smell. Hovering over the nostrils. You sometimes wonder if you should go looking for the tree. But nay. It just makes you remember, how in that book, they had cut down the tree so that woman saved herself a dozen more migraines, or two.

And marigold is yet to flower. In a month and a half. The mild wintry feeling, this delay that keeps the mercury from dropping, makes you warm. Warm and regretful. About why you don't use those blazers anymore. And rainbow scarves. Suddenly you miss zero degree Celsius. And icy feet. The warmth does feel worthless.

On this side of the Ghats, there is a wildflower that grows to welcome the feet of Durga. This time of the year. And if I were a wildflower, I could only be it. I don't think it has a name. And I wouldn't want you to see it because I don't want to be seen either.

October is a tricky month, because it separates the month of my birth from the month of your birth. This month stretches between the month in which I wished you were with me to the month in which I wish I were with you. And in this crazy sinusoidal fluctuation of longing, each day is an episode that underlines another waiting winter. 

4 comments:

Writefully Yours said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Writefully Yours said...

Yet another personal post with a universal appeal!
How do u do that!
Btw, the other way to look at the one month gap is to see it as a 11 month wait for the other person !

chandrima said...

@ prateek .. Nice comment

................your's entirely said...

well...each time of he year is remarkable in some sense...each time has its own memories...each month has its own longing !