It is odd how the weather can affect our mood - when I am in the deep throes of depression a sunny day can seem like an insult - my condition seems to demand a metonymy of the the weather. Equally when I am happy those leaden grey February afternoons seem to reach into my very being and drag me down. When I am depressed however, those same grey afternoons seem apposite and give me a gentle pleasure in the misery.
It is said that we all remember our childhood as a time of sunshine, a time when the seasons played their parts accurately and there was snow on the ground every Christmas and that the greenwood laughed from May to September. Not so easy if you grew up, as I did, in a tropical climate. My youth is certainly a reflection of sunlight, that or the endless rain of the monsoon but an Indian childhood does not lend itself so willingly to such halcyon nostalgia.
I do have time memories where the weather seems to fit the scene; Kalimpong for example was prone to fog and yet I remember none - a less happy holiday was spent in Darjeeling and that I remember as being dank and dingy - riding out to see the snows int the early morning and barely being able to see the rump of the horse in front.
I know it never rained in Puri - just endless days of sunshine and starlit nights, the roar of the breakers providing the lullaby that sent us to sleep. And yet it must have done because I remember grey days when we went to Konarak because it was not a good day for the beach. Once we took a picnic to the beach a Konarak and buried the beer at the water's edge so it would be cold after we had swum. Well - swimming was impossible, if Puri presented a challenge the undertow at Konarak was terrifying. We retreated to the sand and started to dig for the beer, and dug, and dug. The shift in the undertow had carried our beer from below the sand and taken it away as a libation for the Sun God and his Chariot.
Luckily one of the children who had appeared from nowhere shinned up a tree and cut us down dabs which we drank in grateful gulps.
My memory of home is always the cold weather - like a perfect English summer day, warm but not too hot, needing a cardigan at night or the drenching refreshment of the monsoon and the joy of the rain. So really I suppose ,just like everyone else, my another country has its own perfect weather.
It is said that we all remember our childhood as a time of sunshine, a time when the seasons played their parts accurately and there was snow on the ground every Christmas and that the greenwood laughed from May to September. Not so easy if you grew up, as I did, in a tropical climate. My youth is certainly a reflection of sunlight, that or the endless rain of the monsoon but an Indian childhood does not lend itself so willingly to such halcyon nostalgia.
I do have time memories where the weather seems to fit the scene; Kalimpong for example was prone to fog and yet I remember none - a less happy holiday was spent in Darjeeling and that I remember as being dank and dingy - riding out to see the snows int the early morning and barely being able to see the rump of the horse in front.
I know it never rained in Puri - just endless days of sunshine and starlit nights, the roar of the breakers providing the lullaby that sent us to sleep. And yet it must have done because I remember grey days when we went to Konarak because it was not a good day for the beach. Once we took a picnic to the beach a Konarak and buried the beer at the water's edge so it would be cold after we had swum. Well - swimming was impossible, if Puri presented a challenge the undertow at Konarak was terrifying. We retreated to the sand and started to dig for the beer, and dug, and dug. The shift in the undertow had carried our beer from below the sand and taken it away as a libation for the Sun God and his Chariot.
Luckily one of the children who had appeared from nowhere shinned up a tree and cut us down dabs which we drank in grateful gulps.
My memory of home is always the cold weather - like a perfect English summer day, warm but not too hot, needing a cardigan at night or the drenching refreshment of the monsoon and the joy of the rain. So really I suppose ,just like everyone else, my another country has its own perfect weather.
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