Amrit Pandey

The brightly blooming yellow trumpets still stand aside the grey contrast of the city’s street like an elderly hand against the woeful inflictions of life. It’s December, and life is rich with death everywhere ; however it maintains its grace in things, small and pretty, like a fluttering butterfly, whose cocoon now resembles a freshly-ended year. I still live with the weariness of a year-long exhaustion, lips chapped by the heavy, frosty air, wherein wafts the sick smell of demise — of bees that now lie stiffened upon the ground below its beehive ; death more abundant in them than nectar — of the wrinkly face of a pale pink-rose where beauty and expiry reside, intertwined. Death is a common spectacle in this ultimate month. I take a deep sigh and it escapes like a ghost into its winter-saturated brow. The ghost of the year lived by haunts me — the dead seem to occupy me more than the living.

    The insouciant ritual of nature continues — the years characteristically change — as we, like backdrop of a theater scene, tiredly act out our lives. The vivaciousness of early days are but absent in December. The earth lazily awakes, late, and the haze encumbers the spirit of life day-long. The wind has lost its sprightly stride of spring ; the cerulean hue of the clear sky lies sheathed in summer’s chest ; and autumn’s golden gleam is tarnishing into greyish freckle. The prayer flags atop stupas flutter quietly as if the voice of hope was muffled by the penetrating silence of the underworld — the god-abodes aren’t as impervious to gloom as one wishes ; less even the sacred heart! Our hearts are mausoleums for the deceased, it seems. I have buried many a childish springs, lost the youthfulness of summers, and forgotten the imperative mood of reflective falls. The mournful anthem of December reverberates in my bosom.

      This is the end — the hatchet has been swung upon the trunk of a persistent life, an old oak tree ; we need more the dead logs to crackle in flames — it’s a testament as to how dead still accompany the living. We are left only with the charred embers of a life that once was lush and green. It is the time to believe in souls. I rake the dried leaves in my backward like the memory of fallen lives ; every garden, once in a while, turns into a graveyard. There is a subtle lesson here, a reminder to take care of the living. Life is frigid in winter, and a frozen nose isn’t susceptive to low degree of smell, but the living must direct their sense to the flowery smell of spring that faintly breathes in the bleak December.

    Not everything that ends has to be treated with the mournful empathy of a grievous cat. The possibility of life is prevalent aplenty, behold the orange-boughs laden with ripe, juicy tangerines — life is still savory. This is how the living must be, stubborn like a little moth vigorously flying from one compartment to another in the square window panes that now have an artic touch ; we must be thankful we still have breaths to leave marks upon them. The cherry blossoms adorn the sidewalk as to flatter the travellers, whose zests are flickering still. The little suns in our gardens — marigolds — still have their radiance preserved. It is the time of year when the moon is fiercely luminous, and the stars extravagantly beautiful. The contrast of day to night isn’t mighty and wide. It is most suitable time for dreamers.

       The hazy sky resembles a lover’s lip, smeared with mauve lipstick. The touch of the afternoon sun never so gentler before. The attires of any other season know not these warm hugs of fleece-lined coats, woolen sweaters, turtle-necks, and scarfs. December is kinder like that. It is when we learn to hold graciously a warm cup of coffee in the cold mornings, or the winter blankets on chilly nights.

    Beauty and music can never be hindered. The chirping and cooing of robins and doves from their nest in the alcoves are shriller enough to permeate the thick sombre of December — its feathery music makes the atmosphere amiable still. It’s when little flakes of snow start to fall onto the earth, that like a veteran nurse adept at mopping up blood, hide the sheet of lacerated remains of leaves and birds underneath its silvery mantle — the dead bury themselves, and lead way for the living. Isn’t nature skillful in adorning itself? And who can ignore the dazzling display of cristmas lights, that enthusiastically bubble forth thawing off the frost and fatality of December wintry nights like a triumphant signal. The dangling and jingling bells of christmas make room for celebration in our hearts full of lamentation. For it should always be that our sympathies must be on the side of living. The cornerstone of humanity’s survival is its ability to celebrate even in the desperate of times. We must cherish all that is left to us, as we depart with the things that were loved more by death than life.
     The new year advances us as we weigh our sorrows with desires, and with latter we walk into this sudden transition. There is another world. A new world, which we shall meet with a shuddering — the life in us vibrating on the rendezvous. We cannot hold back the wheel of time, and it doesn’t ask if we are ready, but like rivers we are obliged to traverse the course of life, forthright. Where do we place all this grief in our hearts, and live the coming times with grace? What is harder to carry, grief or grace? I take the notice of birds, that brazenly whistle against the heavy silence of the frost ; I examine the flowers, that desperately carry onto themselves the iridescent glow amid the lunar disposition of December. Life, I find, is a mosaic of mourning and celebration. They exist together interlinked like two cellular strands of the DNA, by which we keep living. With deep grievances in my heart, I find the humility to gracefully bid farewell to December, to another year.