North And Windy

Christmas spirit is incomplete without Santa My 5-year-old asked “We don’t have a chimney. How would Santa come into our home, eat his cookies and leave my presents under the tree?” This had been bugging him from past 10 days. His incessant botheration meant that I turned my energies towards securing a perfect Christmas for him. I am happy to share that his Christmas turned out to be great.  How I did it? To resolve my son’s conundrum, during the wee hours of Christmas I wore my winter armour (snow jacket, snow boots, gloves and snow pants) and stepped out in my backyard. I walked till the fence balancing myself on the soft snow and bending sideways drew with my finger something which resembled reindeer footprints. I retraced my steps back carefully to avoid duplication of my footprints. For a moment I felt like a gymnast whose balancing act on snow could earn him a medal in the Olympics. My son woke up, came downstairs and by the kitchen window saw his presents. However

I am bundled up. 6:15 AM. It was dark and cold. As the temperature was less than zero degrees and wind speed was more than 25 KM/hour, it was bone chilling for someone like me who is experiencing his first snow in Canada. My driveway was covered with 5 centimeters of snow from overnight snowfall. I am bundled up with my winter jacket, snow boots, and snow gloves. My nose and eyes were not covered or wrapped around with something warm. A stream has a thin ice-layer. A casual look at calendar suggests that this was still a fall as winter will officially begin on December 21, 2017. And here on this fall morning, I stood in the driveway during an ungodly hour with a shovel in my hand getting ready to clear snow from my driveway. After few minutes of shoveling, fatigue had set in my arms and hands. The shovel felt like as if someone had tied cinder blocks on my hands, arms and back. I could feel churning of muscles happening in my core and realized I am in the middle of

It started in November 2016. I was driving on NH1 from Shimla to Delhi with my wife and our son. As we were nearing Delhi, we started coughing, almost in unison. The shining sun dulled and the colour of sky turned from blue to grey. Smoggy darkness engulfed everything around us and it seemed we were entering a dark tunnel where suspended air pollutants were fighting to rise above in the atmosphere but there was a ceiling which was stopping them. Driving midst other vehicles which were hissing past us, we knew we were entering Delhi’s winter smog. This smog is an annual occurrence before the onset of winters. And along with it comes breathlessness, bronchitis, lung diseases, asthma attacks and some other horrible diseases which occur due to the constant breathing-in of pollutants. Almost everyone that I know of gives up his outdoor activities like running. People joke that this is the only city where if you exercise, during this smoggy period, your chances of