Misty mornings and long chilly nights

Of all the seasons, winter is the most beautiful, for it’s the season with unique charms. Of course, as it is cold, it makes a freezing impact on all living creatures, with its nippy winds and long, lingering nights. Unlike summer that, with its blazing sun, scorches humans all day and rainy season that lashes incessantly with frequent cyclones and wrecks havoc to crops and human lives, winter is an innocuous season with an exciting offering of myriad blessings to humans.

The first and foremost blessing from winter is that it awakens man to be aware of nature around him by unveiling epiphanies of marvellous beauties. These epiphanies of nature in winter remain unfamiliar to the people who do not stir out of their houses in mornings and evenings of winter. But people like me who find themselves on roads on their morning and evening-strolls are invariably blessed with the wintry beauties and joys. When I step out, dressed in thick, woollen jackets in December and January for my morning stroll, I am greeted by a sheet of fog enveloping the whole area. Everything would be blurred and I would behold everything mantled in fog.

While strolling along the paths in the misty mornings, I lift up my head and gaze at the sky. Lo! There appears the baby sun crawling up the firmament, scissoring off the gossamer threads of fog, dispelling slowly the wintry dark and bringing all things into radiant visibility. Trees, houses, electric poles, animals and birds emerge out of the blurred state, declare their concrete presence to the joy of morning-walkers. Birds from the trees squeaking and fly into the radiant sky, leaving their nests. A nightingale from its hidden-perch of a tree keeps cooing ceaselessly, pouring its melodies into the ears of the people strolling and jogging.

This chain of epiphanies I confront invariably in winter during my morning strolls fills in my heart with infinite joy. When I visit villages during the winter, I invariably catch the sight of rural folks, seated around bonfires in wintry-mornings and evenings. They warm up their bodies against the onslaught of blowing, freezing, biting, chilly winds while urban people creep into beds earlier during wintry-nights and seek sound sleep beneath thick blankets. I still remember vividly how in my childhood, during wintry-nights, we would huddle together and cover our bodies from head to toes with blankets and rugs. 


Email: kakivenugopalarao@gmail.com

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