Of palaces and lost times

September rushed past me like those blurry landmarks of memory, where one lives but often forgets the experience. As if someone tore off the ninth page from the calendar; as if it is still waiting, breathing quietly, like an actor in the wings to make a grand entry. So much happened and yet it feels as if this month never happened. Our families were here, I celebrated another birthday, we bought a little apartment facing nothing but open fields and straggly greens. And yes, it has balconies that can be turned into decent-sized greenhouses!
Somewhere in between all this, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, a few weeks back, we found ourselves in front of the gigantic gates of the Chowmahallah Palace. A rushed visit it was, for it had started pouring with a vengeance and someone had decided it'd be wise not to lug around the big camera. Smartphones then, had to save the day.
 
The silhouettes and curves of the ever-fascinating Persian architecture rising against a belligerent, overcast sky. Corridor after corridor of what seemed like eternity. The walls cracked and the yellow on them peeled to a heartbreaking perfection. Through a series of open doors emerges the heart of the palace. The sudden, on-your-face opulence of the Durbar Hall. Rows of dazzling Belgian-crystal chandeliers. Silent, glittering testimonials to the grandeur of the Hyderabad Nizams. Of times lost and days blotted out in yellowed pages of history. 

Farewell September

"September: it was the most beautiful of words, he'd always felt, evoking orange flowers, swallows and regret."

~ Alexander Theroux

Come October and it will all be about spreading the joy - puja and its colourful air, glittering diyas and aromatic sweets, fat pumpkins and lovely pies. 
And yes, bucket-loads of bright chrysanthemums and smiles galore.

Autumn child

I am an autumn child, September to be precise. Which is how I am infinitely attracted to and inspired by the season's earthy mellowness, touched by its slow yet heady melancholia and prone to unpredictable bursts of mood swings. As if being an only child wasn't enough trouble for the world already!

Back home in India, there is no autumn really but only a prolonged and resolute summer which someone once rightly described as 'the dead summer's soul'. So quite understandably, during my first autumn here, I was utterly awestruck by this surreal and surprising change in nature's palette. That leaves actually turn, and how breathtakingly, was beyond the boundaries of my giddy euphoria. Another classic 'foreigner' moment! I would sit by the window and watch the languid leaves flutter aimlessly in the soft afternoon light, creating an illusion of a shimmering curtain of colours. The meditative afternoon walks are the most cherished, when the acoustics of the rustle and crunch of the dead leaves and the crispiness in the air stir one to the very senses. Year after year, the rituals would continue and our vacation to Vermont last autumn only strengthened the love affair forever.

As much beautiful and thrilling the season is, I could never overlook its pensive overtones. And I am certainly not the first one to notice that. Scores of poets and philosophers have ruminated on this riddling ripening of nature - the state when everything is at its mature yet decaying best. Despite the rush of joy from the riot of reds and golds, the falling leaves fall with such a determined longing as if they are in love with the earth, and wish to be one with it. But again, I am a pukka nature junkie and much like autumn, carry a melange of desire and doom waltzing in my heart forever.

And so, the autumn child waits...

P.S. The poetry lover in me could not resist posting these unforgettable lines of e.e. cummings, one of my favourite poets of all times:

"a wind has blown the rain away and blown

the sky away and all the leaves away,

and the trees stand. I think I too have known

autumn too long ..."