Umbrellas, Jackets and Shorts

A ritual was performed every year around mid-March and then sometime in November. The clothes from the boxes were shuffled with those in closets. It didn’t make sense to Pakhi why would they be moved in boxes at all when they could be worn other times as well. So this time when Ma started the same ritual in November, Pakhi asked her why didn’t they keep all the clothes in the closet; why was this task performed at a specific time of the year.

Ma took a deep breath. It was a long story to narrate to Pakhi. She went into her own times when November bought a new excitement to wear sweaters, Jackets and savor the warmth of blankets and quilts. When bonfire would bring the society people at one place to chat munching a handful of groundnuts. Now how could she unfold this to Pakhi that she and people of her time had enjoyed four kinds of weather in a year? It was nothing like the present times when one day felt like spring, the second like chilling winter, the third like a hot summer day and a few days later a day that felt like an autumn leaf fall. It was difficult to explain to Pakhi that how it all went in their times when granny packed up all winter clothes in boxes after putting them in sunshine for sometime in the month of March and put all the summer clothes in Ma’s and her siblings' closets. How their summers went splashing in the water and enjoying ice creams. Then came June and it would start pouring, sometimes heavily. It was time for umbrellas, raincoats, and swings too. And by September as the rains subsided, it brought autumn shedding away the leaves and reminding them to prepare for winters.

All of it was ‘old-times’ now and Pakhi just saw the ritual happening of shuffling clothes. It remained a practice for Ma. As for Pakhi, her closet did not see one season at a time; but a mix of summer, winter and rain clothes pulling out an outfit depending what the morning brought for her.

Ma never thought half of her past life what scientists and geologists had been warning of as ‘climatic changes’ and 'global warming'. But she felt guilty today as she told Pakhi, how things had changed and how her individual contribution small but meaningful could have not made the weather cycle extinct. AND how this ritual (that Pakhi sees as) would have made sense to her