Winter is what makes life in Delhi livable. But the houses are mostly built so as to make the cold rise and get into your bones. A friend's daughter here, home for the vacation from college in Chicago, famous for its sun, wind, chill factor and ""20 degrees temperature, virtually insists that it is colder here. We may not have central heating but still, why is traditional house design in these parts dedicated to making you freeze in winter?
Traditional knowledge is never perverse and the houses are in fact sensibly designed, with thick walls and few windows, to keep interiors cool during the summer months which far outnumber the winter ones. But this is cold comfort "" literally "" in winter and the great deliverer is the sun. High near 20 degrees mid-day temperatures make for divine outdoors where to soak in the sun and warm the bones to help them fight the damp, dark interiors.
This winter has been among the most glorious as it has been very cold and very sunny. There have been just about two or three foggy, smoggy days early in the new year. The rest have been warm lazy days and cold clear nights. The farmers fretted about the missing winter rains as the rest soaked in the sun, made the more pleasurable by the stillness of the wind. When it did rain for a couple of days, it poured in right earnest. That cleared the dust, washed the leaves and made the following nights flawless crystal.
As the farmers saw their wheat fields dry and switched on the pumps to water the crops, the Haryana State Electricity Board switched off the power to the rest. The winter was brought closer home with 18-20 hour power cuts. If you didn't have money to fit geysers in a new home, it didn't matter. If you fretted about the cost of electricity in prohibition-bound impecunious Haryana, hiking every rate that could be hiked, it didn't matter again. Life by daylight and candlelight brought the countryside right inside your home, as did farming with bright yellow mustard fields basking in the sun next to factory sheds.
But severe winter in suburban Haryana had another plus. On cold nights when Palam recorded 4 degrees or less, Haryana nudged its cold nose at zero. Our new little puppy needed a hot water bottle in his linen basket bed and the hand in the tap water felt nothing after the first five numbing seconds. It was all a menace or a bonus depending on how you looked at life. The greatest treat or nuisance came that morning at 7.15 when the children muffled up and even the car started up but the windscreen wouldn't clear of the opaque dew. It was frost, we exclaimed, and the children got busy scraping it off with their fingers and holding it till it lost its magic and turned plain cold water.
It was the nearest consolation to not being in the hills to see the snow as we had done one winter. We excitedly recalled how it snowed before we reached Kufri and after we left Naldera, but never anywhere while we were there. And so it was, a fruitless pilgrimage till the last lunch at Chail, bags in the car and ready to go back. When suddenly the clouds showered white monochrome confetti on the tall pines and smooth lawn. The midpoint between snowy Himachal and prosaic Delhi is frost laden Haryana.
The magic is now a little gone. It is not so cold. And there is no frost in the morning. Winter is not fully departed but the best of it is over.
