The Other Small Seasons

It was pouring in Chennai last night, and had been for a couple of nights before that, and I told Neel, “It’s time to start following Tamil Nadu Weather Man.”

And then I realised how many little habits in our house are dictated by the season.

Summer starts with me changing the comforters to light cotton quilts, moving my hosiery clothes out of our room, bringing out summer dresses, skirts and T-shirts, and somehow making shorts the most important piece of clothing I own. Blue Tokai becomes the obvious choice for our machine. 

We naturally wake up earlier. The days feel longer. Evenings somehow become exhausting. I pull the curtains out, change them to blackout curtains, keep the lighting at home minimal around dusk and the AC is almost always on.

But the transition into monsoon is my favourite.

I think Chennai has a very particular charm during the monsoon, especially when you are at home. The city transforms. There is something about the air, the smell, the sound of the rain against the balcony, the trees suddenly looking greener. I genuinely wish there was a perfume for how Chennai smells during the monsoon, at least the good part of it.

Every monsoon, we are happy and wary at the same time.

There is the annual inverter check because we know the power cuts are coming. We look at the old electricity lines around us. We charge everything we possibly can. The AC gets used much less and instead the balcony is completely open, with the sheer cotton curtains moving around with the wind.

There is this grey gloom that sits around the city and I absolutely love it.

Neel, on the other hand, is a much bigger fan of summer and sunlight. He likes the house bright and full of light. I like it when the house feels a little darker, a little quieter.

Our food and reading changes too. Some mornings, chai replaces coffee. My book mood changes completely. In summer, I usually reach for literary fiction or Japanese novels. During the monsoon, I want thrillers, murder mysteries, something that makes me want to keep reading while the rain is outside.

The scented agarbathis come out. The evenings are darker. Even with the balcony open, the house feels dim.

And then, slowly, the season moves towards the festivals I love.

Most of my favourite festivals happen around this time. Navratri makes me want to dress up and go to friends' houses. Diwali is my favourite.

Every year, our cousins pick one house and stay over.

It doesn't matter how old we are. It doesn't matter where we live. It doesn't matter how busy everyone has become. And no matter who we have been married to, they always become a part of the tradition. And that is perhaps the best part, the fact that you have partners who get along with your cousins of any age group. On that day, it’s just your whole family over some politics, alcohol, takeaway food and sweets from the afternoon. And the last few years have always involved all our pet dogs and that’s just the best part. The chaos, the barks, the face-offs and their wagging tails. 

On that day, it is just family.

I have loved that tradition for all thirty-three years of my life, and I think there is something very comforting about traditions that survive simply because nobody ever decided to stop doing them. 

Then comes December.

My favourite month.

For the most obvious reason, most of my clients are on a longer shutdown, so work becomes quiet. It means a lull. It means vacation. It means Christmas.

The colours of the house change. What I wear changes. I start watching Christmas movies and reading silly children's novels. My husband and I take time to decorate the house with Christmas lights, wreaths and our tree.

For the last four years, this has been particularly exciting because our niece comes over and she and I do it together.

We bake cookies and cakes. We put an animated movie on the projector. We wear matching clothes.

There is something about these rituals that I have started to appreciate more as I get older.

Maybe because you don't realise when you are living them that they are becoming memories.

You don't know that the particular way you decorate the tree one year, or the book you read during one monsoon, or the cousin sleeping on your living room floor will eventually become something you remember with a strange amount of affection.

Maybe this is why I like seasons so much.

They give us permission to change.

You know when the cotton quilts come out. You know when the chai starts. You know when the Christmas lights will go up. You know that Diwali means everyone will somehow find their way back to one house.

Life feels less like one long stretch of time and more like chapters you return to every year.

Of course, Chennai's monsoon has another side.

The flooding. Not knowing where the live wires are down. The difficulty of getting an auto. The ridiculous prices. The constant anxiety about when the next storm will hit. The season of dengue, leptospirosis. Water logged literally everywhere. 

My routine during these months becomes refreshing the weather news every thirty minutes.

Over the last few years, my husband and I have become quite prepared for these situations. We have crossed five floods together with no power. We live in an old apartment without a generator, so we make do with an inverter.

Fully charged laptops, iPads, phones and backup power.

Water.

Ready-to-eat food.

A full gas cylinder.

Milk in smaller tetra packs. 

Battery-operated lights.

We have learnt to prepare because once, we had no power for four days and no real way out.

We took the floor mattress to the hall, brought our books and laptops and quite literally spent all four days there.

It started out with anxiety but eventually became the best memory we have had. We lost our car in the previous flood, quite literally floating on the road with us inside it. What was once a tense moment became a memory of how we navigated it. 

But when I think about it now, I remember it with a strange fondness.

Because there is something about being stuck somewhere with the person you love that makes you realise how little you actually need.

A mattress. A few books. A laptop. Top Ramen curry noodles. And someone to talk to.

There was no AC, no proper routine, no going anywhere, no real plan for the day.

But there was always someone sitting next to you.

I was at the gym yesterday when I overheard a boy saying that he was worried about marriage.

Groceries. Expenses. Responsibilities. Life. Everything that was coming his way.

And I couldn't lie, I understood him.

I have been overwhelmed by those things too at once.

People ask me what it is like being married, and I honestly don't know what to answer.

It just is.

Somewhere along the way, life finds a way to adapt when there is love.

You figure out who likes the curtains open and who wants them closed. Who wants sunlight and who wants rain. Who remembers to check the inverter. Who wants chai in the morning. Who gets nervous when the weather gets bad.

You learn each other's rhythms without really noticing that you are learning them.

And I think that is what makes marriage so difficult to explain.

Because it isn't one big feeling.

It is thousands of very small things that slowly become a life.

It is someone knowing that you will want to sit in the balcony when it rains.

Someone who will listen to you complain about the weather for the tenth time.

Someone who will sit with you on a mattress in the hall when the power goes out.

Someone who will decorate a Christmas tree with you.

Someone who will be there for the Diwali mornings and the ordinary Tuesdays and the days when neither of you particularly feels like doing anything.

I don't think marriage means that life becomes easier.

There will still be things to worry about. There will still be storms. There will be expenses, responsibilities, uncertainty, bad days and situations neither of you can control.

And maybe that is what companionship is.

Not someone who makes sure nothing difficult happens to you.

But someone who makes the difficult things feel like they are yours to get through together.

But there is something incredibly reassuring about knowing that, through all of it, there is one person you are building the memories with.

And maybe that is all life really is.

The seasons changing.

The house changing.

You changing.

The people around you growing older.

Traditions continuing and new ones being created.

And through all of it, having someone beside you who sees the same things you do and remembers them with you.

I am not sure how to explain marriage beyond that.

No matter what we are, where we are, what season of life we are in, or what the situation looks like, there is always that one person you look forward to sharing it with.

The rain. The festivals. The good news. The bad news. The ridiculous things. The ordinary things. The things you know you will forget and the things you know you will remember forever.

It is tough to explain.

You will know it once you know it.