Wednesday the 18th. It’s an unexpected strike today. The Indians have once again managed to find a legitimate reason for bringing life to a standstill for 24 hours, just to prove a point; the people of Kerala are disagreeing with something or other… so the strike means everything is closed; buses aren’t running, shops are shut and schools are closed. No school and all are happy; students are delighted and teachers are feeling lighter. As for me, it doesn’t make too much of a difference one way or another.
January is flying by. Sometimes I totally loose track of what month it actually is. And it’s hard to think of people experiencing the ‘normal January blues’ at home; the majority will be wishing for the Spring to arrive, waiting for the brighter days and projecting their visions into February… the shortest month that will fly by and promptly bring on the Spring. At this moment, I don’t think I could be experiencing anything more different from that world back at home or in Europe. I guess now that I’m nearing the end of my visa, I’m seeing this place even brighter and lighter than before, it’s feeling it to be warmer in many different ways.
Touching the subject of ‘warmth’ opens up a topic. The Keralites (who are the citizens of this state) say it’s winter right now. That’s fine. I can agree with the fact that January is one of the months of Winter. But what gets me is that they claim it’s so cold and that we’ve experienced a big ‘climate-change’ (which is also apparently the reason for so many students and teachers to have had the flu over the past months, of which I was one). If this talk I’ve been hearing around me is anything to go by, I’d have sworn the temperature had dropped by 20 degrees in the space of a few weeks! This really isn’t what I experienced. To me, this ‘climate change’ was so subtle that I hardly noticed it at all and had to laugh when they were complaining about this ‘huge’ difference and the ‘cold’ winter we’re having!
I’ll clarify: in October it was hot and humid, all the time… above 30 degrees. Then in November the rain came and the nights and early mornings were cooler (maybe by 5 degrees), but the days were still warm, with temperatures in the high twenties (I’m sounding like a weather reporter here!) Anyhow, this instability lasted up until the end of December. And now there’s no more rain, but the nights and early mornings are still ‘cool’… (it never drops below 20 degrees) and the days are still soaring around 30 degrees. The climate is more stable. And those around me say it’s winter and it’s cold.
Hummmmm… Not too sure about that… because I still sweat buckets when I’m teaching in the 30 degree heat, I still use the fan in the evenings before sleep, I still wish for an umbrella when I walk in the afternoon sun after finishing school (I haven’t purchased one for some unknown reason…) and I still fear what the short ride to school in the commodore does to my skin, because of the sun beating down on untainted windows. So… this is Winter… The people here have no idea how lucky they are… they most likely would shrivel if they were placed in Ireland, or anywhere else for that matter where a ‘real winter’ can be experienced. Ah no… I know it’s not fair of me to talk like this, and I’m well aware that the labels we give to our surroundings are based on our own personal experiences and memories… But I still needed to let this out…
And I’ll just add that this little rant probably has done my country of origin proud… because the Irish will always talk and complain about the weather… oops… sorry to offend… but it’s true… Hummmm… then again I think people do it everywhere in the world, because here in the south of India they’re complaining too! The conclusion of my little rant: the majority is never happy with the climate; it will always be too hot, too cold, too sunny, too cloudy, too wet, too windy… no matter where the person is AND what a persons interprets as warm in one part of the world will never be the same as what another person elsewhere interprets as being warm… Right, enough reportings and complaints about the weather from this end… Because I DO have more interesting things to share
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