We don’t really have an autumn in Delhi. Our summer merges into winter with only a brief transition heralded by the passage of Diwali. This means Keats Ode to Autumn is just a poem for us. His “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” is a haunting description, not a lived reality.
This is where America and Europe are so different. Fall, as it’s called in New England, is perhaps the most colorful season of the year. The trees are clothed in shades of ochre, rust, magenta, auburn and deep green set against their own rich brown. Even though the days are steadily growing shorter, the sun bathes the landscape with a warm golden glow. The world looks like a picture postcard. And the rhythm of life feels like a lilting tune.
Twenty years ago, I arrived in Washington in the middle of fall. As the taxi drove from Dulles Airport to the Hay Adams Hotel, the other side of the square from the White House, I saw for the first time the autumn palette of colors I only knew till then from vivid photographs and eloquent descriptions. I was riveted. It was mesmerizing. I spent the entire journey looking out of the window. And I fell in love with America in November.
But it was 50 years ago at Stowe that I experienced my first autumn. It’s a thousand acre estate sculpted by Capability Brown, stretching for miles in every direction from the Vanbrugh designed ducal mansion at its centre. I was an A former, incompetent at sport and I’d aton for my disability with long walks by the lakes. The trees would be shedding their leaves and the grass turning beige and brown. But as the sun would set and the twittering of the gathering swallows echo through the horizon, even as a teenager I felt transported to heaven.
Years later, on the Backs in Cambridge, I’d spend my time kicking the fallen leaves as I’d wander from Queens’, past King’s, Clare and Trinity towards St John’s, on my way to the Union. Arjun Sahgal, my cousin, once found a wad of 50 pound notes under the foliage. After reporting his find to the police it became his when no one claimed it. I had no such luck.
But I was blessed with good fortune in Grantchester, where I would cycle to on Sundays for lunch. I’d sit by the Cam, hearing its waters gently gurgling, sipping bitter and dreaming of what I knew could never be. But of such reveries was my happiness made.
This is also when I first understood the comfort of companionship. The silent presence of a good chum often means more than the chatter of ceaseless conversation or, even, the sound of your own voice — although I can’t deny I’m rather fond of mine. It was thus that Satish Aggarwal became one of my closest friends. Alas, five years later he died.
Satish once told me autumn was his favorite time of year. It never occurred to me to ask him why but I was well aware that he’d spend much of October staring out of his window, on to the Wren Library Court overlooking his rooms in Pembroke, as the first chill of winter would creep into the air. “I spend more time gazing at the college gardens than working. They’re stunning in autumn,” was his disarming explanation. But he was also a proficient mathematician and, not surprisingly, ended up a proud wrangler.
Now they say November is a cruel month. I disagree. Don’t think of it as the prelude to winter. Consider it on its own terms.
This year I will cross three score years and ten. You could say I’m stepping into the autumn of my life. But I still revel in nature’s autumn as much as I did when I was an errant schoolboy at Stowe. Time passes and one grows older, but some things never change. Beauty and one’s emotions are two of them.
Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story. The views expressed are personal
