Winters are always my favourite season. Some bizarre connection though, when people are shivering with cold, I love to stay out for ice cream. For a very strange reason and co incidence when I was born, it was the coldest day of the season and for that my Dadaji gave me the name Hemani (English meaning : Glacier). But my love for the season never faded out, more cold it is, better I feel, my skin glows. When it rains in winters, it adds joy.

I lived many years of my life at a place where temperature dips to 1 degree, where the hands feel like they are cut when they are put under a tap water. There, going on long drives with open window, the water coming from your eyes, a red running nose, the feel of chilled face.... or just roaming around in summer wear, driving people around me nuts. I bet no one must have tried to henna their hands at 1 am in January when the temperature is touching almost zero.

Mornings are usually a joy, when we three go out and we could see the air coming out from out mouth and nose. The time for playing smoke smoke , or it’s so foggy around, playing the guessing game, what’s coming, none of us wanted to say it’s the school bus, because it ends all the fun.

The stocks of peanuts, gajak, rewadi, which we eat in conventional 10 kg cotton rajais. Methi makki ke paranthe, sarson ka saag makki ki roti, gajar ka halwa, different soups. It takes the taste buds to altogether a different level.

A small bon fire in campus, standing in circle, the fire and hot gossips, it’s a deadly combo which we can’t create in any other season.

It’s a season when no virus can survive or at least is active, leaving fresh and pure air to breathe.

May be this is the only time of the year when I find time for myself, when everyone is busy with themselves, so leaving me alone, making me live for myself...