My first sweater..

The whole fury in the common room got over. People across the country got to a consensus that it’s each and everyone’s responsibility to extend their vacation until Diwali. I was the small town boy not understanding the dynamics that was taking the centre-stage. The mid-sems were causing abnormal bowel movements and cheating in the exams was not a part of the armory then. I was the plumpy 85-kg chap when I joined the institute who reduced to a 72-kg piece of meat over 3 months.

Come Durga Pujo, the vacations started with the most tiresome train journey defying the normal sleeping hours. Back in Chennai, people enquired about my place of study and the second question that followed was “Isn’t there a big Durga Ma temple in that place?”  I used to laugh it off saying it’s so grand a temple that you must pay a visit. Durgapur doesn’t mean that it has the biggest Durga Ma temple, similar to Puri, does it have the biggest Puri?

The vacations weren’t extended to Diwali as the earlier consensus was supposed to. After a couple of weeks, I was back in West Bengal. Meanwhile, my Ramzan month fast continued and it was bad to be back again with nothing else to expect from life, but to be ragged as first years. But, I was proved wrong. There was something in the climate that was changed. The air was a lot cooler and was as mesmerizing as the Bengali girls (not the ones in college). A single t-shirt no longer sufficed. A type of clothing unheard of, made its way into my wardrobe – woolen clothes. My first sweater, my first razai and my first wind-cheater, all made special appearances. I was for the first time in my life introduced to the loveliest of all seasons – “Winter”. Hailing from a tropical coastal city, rains and a chill weather with the mercury stooping to 20⁰C was all the winter I had seen in my life.

This experience was very different. Roomates fighting for the electrical heaters, the foggy mornings (of course not caused by grass smoking), the hot teas, the pleasant weather, the spectacles getting blurred while coming out of the computer laboratory, playing cricket with woolen clothes on, not able to decipher a girl’s figure because of her over-sized woolen clothes, days getting shorter and absolute bliss while hanging out in the evening with friends. I miss Durga Pujo, I miss the change that it brings into human life. The sense of calmness and tranquility that prevails can’t be expressed in words, but can be felt and remembered for a very long time.