The most romantic season (in Kolkata)

There is a very good chance that you are expecting to read about monsoon. But honestly I have always found this particular season to be exceptionally gloomy. The sky dressed in drab rags, the flowers sobbing with downcast eyes, the leaves shedding copious tears…nature seems to be mourning a disaster of grave magnitude.

Well…the last few metaphors were not particularly expressive…so let us move to the real plane. Yes, monsoon can seem romantic but only from the confines of your comfy room. The sight of a raindrop trickling down the window pane can surely kick up your hormones and trigger in you an overwhelming desire to procreate but wait….I remember a few other instances too. For an already broken heart the same silky raindrop can wreak havoc. So you see monsoon is not always romantic…even when you are inside a room. And when you are outside? God…oh…god…who enjoys rain dancing in a natural setting? You do? Hmm…so mud splashing onto your fresh clothes is your idea of having fun? And if you were brought up in Kolkata (like I have been) you would know this…mud is not just soil mixed with water. For the sake of your mental integrity I will not elaborate upon the other constituents of “mud”. (For those people who are still curious it ranges from phlegm, rotting fruit peels to feces…ok I am stopping now!)
And your clothes stick to your body and sometimes the rain turns them transparent inviting lecherous glances from creepy men. If you are a man you probably are laughing away. Well...men don’t like it either…do they…when the wet clothes cling to their body accentuating the flab accumulated in the most inappropriate parts of their body…(a man with a well toned physique is a very rare exception). Women do not ogle (generally) but they do smirk in sarcasm.
I could go on but I think you have already got the point. The only time the rains are welcome is after a cruel and unrelenting spell of the strong tropical sun. That reminds me of summer.

“Oh, to not be in Kolkata now that May’s there!”
No, I did not mean April, though you ‘may’ add April and June to the list as well. The summer noons are so unbearable that you would not want to live anymore…so I do the next best thing to being dead…I sleep. But that is not all. The temperature would keep soaring till sleeping is rendered impossible. During this phase you would be tired and severely sleep deprived all 24 hours. And even if you live and work in air-conditioned rooms you would need to commute and get out once in a while. So the drastic fluctuations in temperature would give you “brain wrenching” headaches, your temper would shorten to less than a micron, you would pick up fights with every-possible-body and the world would happily label the Kolkatans ill-mannered.
I once had a friend who found summer to be the ‘coolest’ of all seasons. Summer was the most romantic season for this boy. I think he is still single…or not….if his taste in women is as weird as his taste in seasons then he might have found a match for himself.

And yes, the ominous spring…you will often find the Bengali poets extolling spring. All I can say is that I find this to be a blind imitation of the works of the English poets. Our springs are in no way comfortable or romantic. Recall that phrase about the darkest hour being the nearest to dawn. Tell me, at any given dark hour how can you tell if it would get even darker or if the darkness would start to fade. Well…spring would feel like the darkest hour minus the thrill of the unknown…here you are absolutely sure that it would get darker.
Apart from Holi, (which some shy people use as an excuse to touch people of the opposite sex), there is no romantic twist to this season. Some would wonder how and why I am leaving the fiery palash flowers out. You may like them but I find them a tad overdressed in the slutty way.

Just as the vernal equinox would bring the message of doom the other equinox would bring hope. Again the English poets would bring out the dreary and foreboding qualities of autumn. But I have always found the autumns to be a delightful time to be alive. The sky would don a vibrant shade of blue interspersed with soft and cool, pristinely white clouds. The sun would be unusually bright and yet the temperature would not make you want to die. The festive season would impart a childlike halo to every living being. Oh! It’s such a magical time. Many young romances (these generally do not last) bloom during the pujas. But yet I refuse to deem it the most romantic season. Why?
Well…the streets would always be traffic congested. At Kolkata, the population is way above the sane limit and as we all know too many cooks cannot cook the broth properly. And to be honest the autumnal sun’s megalomaniacal rays hurt the eyes a little…they could have been a bit more mellow. I shall tell you one secret…I tell everyone that I adore autumn because of its splendour and festivities but actually I am partial to autumn because I was born in autumn. How many autumns ago? Hey! How is that relevant here?

So autumn is not the most romantic season either. That leaves us with winter…the magnificent winter. You would look your best, you would feel at your best and you would have the confidence to inspire the best in your romantic partner. Some people (yes…I do mean the English poets) associate the wintry chill with stagnancy and death. My suggestion to such people is that they come down and spend one summer in Kolkata and never again in their lifetime would they speak disdainfully of cold.
Do you see something terribly lonely about the winter nights? Then…tell me, does that quality not make you value and cherish human company even more? Well…winter comes this close (I am making a small space between my thumb and index finger) to being the most romantic season but it is not. We seem to have run out of seasons but I believe we can accommodate one more season which I think is the most romantic of all…

The windy season.
The windy season is the most romantic season in Kolkata. When the wind blows against me it sweeps all the melancholia, exhaustion and dreariness off me. It gives me the overwhelming feeling of happiness that one feels only in the grip of first love. The breeze can be a gentle one or it can be a rough gale…I like them all. Though stronger the wind the better I feel. (Although the hot and dry tropical winds do not qualify...) I can keep on trying for the rest of my lives (yes…I sometimes do believe in reincarnation) but I do not think it would possible for me to put into words the heavenly bliss I experience in the windy season.
The flip side? Even though I feel romantic the wind sets my hair into an awful mess making me look like some truant from the asylum.