I have spent an Autumn and a Winter, am ongoing a Spring and am anticipating a Summer in England. For a person like me who is driven by weather, be it about efficiency at any engaging work or plain mood, a post on the English weather was certain, only took some time to understand it in entirety. A step outside the house in the morning on way to school, and the first human I would meet on the road would greet me with “Good morning! Lovely day, isn’t it?”- that is in cases when the sun is glowing, in cases when it is dull and gloomy I also get to hear “Good morning! Wonder if the weather forecasts are of any good, they have been forecasting the sun since quite a while now without any success.” Being from a tropical country to crave for the sun is natural for me, but then actually, everybody likes the sun. However centrally heated you house or your car may be, nothing can replace what sun does for you.
When I came here, it was almost like summers going to end and I witnessed trees shedding off their clothes. Dint like much seeing them naked, and probably neither did they like it much, so saw winters descend only to cover them with snow. That was perhaps good for the trees to get the gift of a white gown, dressed like angels, but was cruelty to me. I was cold. Not that I was subject to atrocities by having no coats or hats, but the craving for a warm sun (yes, there is another kind of sun also, the fake sun, which may be full and glaring but with no warmth) would make me cold. I remember having enjoyed the first rain here, only to be commented by a friend that I would soon pray for it to never rain again. And actually I did pray so. It rained relentlessly for ages, those fake rains which don’t wet you enough to claim that your bath for the day is done, but only irritate you with their continuity and lack of vigor, may be reminding you of a sluggish life which sometimes seems just too much stretched.
It never got any less cold though. I started feeling numb, my mood was getting sick of the monotonicity of similar kind of feeling everyday. The weather did all it could to do to make me reach the point of exasperation. World looked black and white to me, black nights and white mornings. Probably the trees also started getting bored of their white dresses. The dynamics of life is not linear but non-linear, it is not in black and white but in colours. And so spring dawned. I welcomed it with a huge hug, the days got warmer, the trees got their leaves back, they look merrier in green.
It has been quite warm since a few days now, the sun is no more fake, trying to remain as true and just to its work as possible. So today in the morning when I got up by the sun rays peeping into my room from the little apart curtains at the corner, I smiled, smiled at the prospect of having a warm day ahead. I got up and drew apart my curtains with full rigor as an acknowledgment to the grace of the sun. And lo! The cars parked on the roads, the tall trees and the short shrubs, the grasses on the front yards of the houses, the street lamp-posts and the bus-stop stands, everything that I could see- covered by a white blanket of snow. Fake sun, I must say!