The winter season is just around the corner. It is the time for the fortunate ones like you and me to open the box that contained the woolen clothes all through the summer, and revel in the smell of wool. It is time for those misty mornings, fog laden air and cool winds sending literal shivers down your spines. It is also, in many ways, time to embrace your vulnerabilities.
Not that summer is benevolent, but the fear of looming disaster and death seems more likely when you find everything around you either frozen or freezing. When life draws itself into a cocoon, when late mornings and not so late nights resemble deserted warships, you realize that you're vulnerable. You realize that all through the spring, summer, monsoon, and right up till autumn, you were free- in body, mind and spirit- but the moment you step out now, you're greeted with hostility. It is nature's way of reminding you of the springs, summers and autumns of your lives and telling you that there has to be a winter.
Winter shows you the mirror. It tells you that your hands that might have worked ceaselessly throughout the year, mending lives and breaking them, are capable of trembling themselves. Your lips that would have mended a broken heart or broken a soulful one are capable of roughening up. Your feet might have trodden all over the world but are capable of going numb. You don layers upon layers upon layers as if to cover yourself and your frailties, in a hope that the winds won't pierce you like an open dagger does. But, they do, and all of a sudden you realize that you're human and you can bear only so much, that the knell can sound anytime and if it does now, you're more than likely to give in.
Winter sets the clock, the clock against which we race, the clock that ticks, the clock that's beating out of time. But, to what end? To know that when the buzzer goes off, we'll be treated with something that we have no control over? To know that there's a force more powerful than the powers that we display to our inner selves? We might as well tread and not run, keeping in mind that we don't run over something that's just as alive as we are.
Winter is karma slapping you in the face to remind you that you're only mortal. Winter is eternal just like death and there are only so many winters in our lives. Every year, the clock is set, and every year you run against it. Chosen wisely whether you want to embrace something that's eternal and unforgiving, panting for breath, or shouldering arms. Because if you manage to come out to the other side, to see another winter, you're one hell of a lucky person.
Not that summer is benevolent, but the fear of looming disaster and death seems more likely when you find everything around you either frozen or freezing. When life draws itself into a cocoon, when late mornings and not so late nights resemble deserted warships, you realize that you're vulnerable. You realize that all through the spring, summer, monsoon, and right up till autumn, you were free- in body, mind and spirit- but the moment you step out now, you're greeted with hostility. It is nature's way of reminding you of the springs, summers and autumns of your lives and telling you that there has to be a winter.
Winter shows you the mirror. It tells you that your hands that might have worked ceaselessly throughout the year, mending lives and breaking them, are capable of trembling themselves. Your lips that would have mended a broken heart or broken a soulful one are capable of roughening up. Your feet might have trodden all over the world but are capable of going numb. You don layers upon layers upon layers as if to cover yourself and your frailties, in a hope that the winds won't pierce you like an open dagger does. But, they do, and all of a sudden you realize that you're human and you can bear only so much, that the knell can sound anytime and if it does now, you're more than likely to give in.
Winter sets the clock, the clock against which we race, the clock that ticks, the clock that's beating out of time. But, to what end? To know that when the buzzer goes off, we'll be treated with something that we have no control over? To know that there's a force more powerful than the powers that we display to our inner selves? We might as well tread and not run, keeping in mind that we don't run over something that's just as alive as we are.
Winter is karma slapping you in the face to remind you that you're only mortal. Winter is eternal just like death and there are only so many winters in our lives. Every year, the clock is set, and every year you run against it. Chosen wisely whether you want to embrace something that's eternal and unforgiving, panting for breath, or shouldering arms. Because if you manage to come out to the other side, to see another winter, you're one hell of a lucky person.
