Who took my winter away?

Gone season: Now, before winters have begun, even before it becomes cold enough to look for your sweaters, Delhi is hugged by an all-enveloping smog.

Winter is not coming. At least, not the winter we knew.

Delhi has killed its winter, there can be little doubt about it now. The stars are unwanted. The moon has been packed up and the sun dismantled. All that remains is a cloud of smog over the city. The blue skies of Delhi’s winter, clear night skies when you could see the Milky Way are all memories. What lingers in Delhi’s new winter, is the promise of acrid smoke, of burning eyes and a sore throat.

Enid Blyon’s books confused me. I could never quite understand why the Famous Five and the Secret Seven loved the summer so much. The summer sun, after all, sapped you and left you gasping for shade. Growing up in Delhi, the long summer months were spent waiting for winter, hoping that the winter holidays would become longer than the summer ones. After all, from November till February, you could play football for longer hours, go for long walks or just simply sit in a park, peel oranges and bask in the sun.

Schools across the city would spill out in the winters. The annual ritual of finding out that your previous year’s school uniform no longer fit you also came with the promise of an impending week (or month, depending on which school you went to) of games. Ranging from activities that seem ridiculous now, such as the sack race, to others — that, in hindsight, seems to have been designed simply to amuse exhausted teachers — like the lemon and spoon race.

Growing up in this city, the hardest thing, arguably, about the winter months, was the daily ritual of waking up and getting out of bed. My parents insisted that I take a shower every morning, irrespective of how cold it was. This was followed by the arduous walk to the bus stop in Delhi’s pitch-black early morning, where the school bus would finally turn up. There was little to look forward to, barring that first day when your breath quickly transformed into mist. This was a marker that winters were truly upon us, quickly followed by the winter fog, which would make everything mysterious and beautiful at the same time.

That has changed, too. Now before winters have begun, even before it becomes cold enough to look for your sweaters, Delhi is hugged by an all-enveloping smog. The sky disappears, houses blur and all hint of mystery is replaced by watery eyes that squint to distinguish between dystopia and reality.

Not too long ago, food during the winter tasted better as well. Fish fries with kasundi and chicken manchow soup from the van around the corner were just more wholesome in the colder months — or, perhaps, I was just hungrier. But arguably, the soul food of these months, were roasted peanuts. Slightly charred and warm to touch, distributed in packets of different sizes and seasoned with black salt — peanuts have always been the soul of winters. Now, every time I see a vendor selling peanuts, I find nostalgia mingling with the black smoke emanating from the pot containing smouldering charcoal. I find that childhood memories are now punctuated with my adult, winter vocabulary — “particulate matter”, “biomass burning”, and “air quality”.

The parks were the first to go, replaced by malls and flats. Public spaces, where one could sit, stand, while away time, disappeared one by one. Existing playgrounds were “beautified”, and flower beds turned up. Then came the signboards, banning “football, cricket, gambling and drinking.” At least, the fragrance of the saptaparni flower — also known as Shaitan or the Devil’s tree — remained. The almost narcotically sweet smell of the flower, otherwise unrecognisable, reminded me every year that Delhi winters could be and were beautiful.

The trees must still be there. But this year, I haven’t been ambushed by its aroma as yet. Instead, Delhi smells, feels and tastes like the sum of its mistakes — the cost of development, some would argue, a cocktail of bitter diesel fumes, charred bio-matter and the unmistakeable stench of a city being let down.

Schools will close soon for the winter break — as they should. Children are at most risk. Each day they spend, breathing the city’s air, is the equivalent of smoking 45 cigarettes.

Hard to balance a lemon, or breathe, after that.