November~ Chronicling Memories.

It's the first of November. For some reason, winter always has a way of surprising me. Like a guest arriving unannounced a little earlier than expected. Okay. Lousy metaphor. Simply put, when I woke up this morning, the air was chilly and I had to wear something warm. Assuming that the climate here is tropical, I came unprepared. How I miss my winter clothes...
I walked to work this morning. The sun was out and it was a beautiful morning. I'm normally not very generous with compliments to or what I say about mornings. Suffice it to say that I'm not a morning person. But it was a beautiful morning today. For the first time this year, I could smell winter in the air. I usually claim to smell many things in the air. For instance, I've uttered things like, "I can smell Kohima" or "It smells like Aunty So and so's house." Smells, like music, hold memories... Rushdie said that in one of his books, I think. And indeed, there are a myriad of experiences one can attach to such peculiarities.
I guess I thought that I could "smell winter" because on the way to the school, I got whiffs of some burning branches. I remember cold Kohima evenings when unused or bare branches of the pine for the Christmas tree would be burned. One could also smell yet other branches from other houses being burned in the local garbage dump. That's a "winter smell" for me. The smell of pine trees remind me of a particular evening one winter. My mum and I went up to a hill in the forest with her friend to get our Christmas trees (I don't think we can do that anymore :D). Our annual contribution to deforestation, one could say, before an ersatz one made a permanent substitution. Anyway, it was a beautiful winter evening. I can remember the tall pines silhouetted against the dark blue winter sky. I get reminded of this often, especially whenever I think about winter... and this memory, among others, is so poignant because it was just a few years before my mum's friend would die of cancer.
November makes me nostalgic about my school days. November meant the approach of the final exams. November meant the completion of S.U.P.W projects which involved the burning of the ends of satin strips to make flowers of some sort, and exhibiting them and finally having them hoarded away by the nuns. November meant religious math tuition till the night before the exam, the scrubbing of desks and benches on the playground, setting up the classrooms, and finally taking the exams. And sure, November also meant that school's nearly out for a good two months. Better still, November was a herald to glorious December.
...Glorious December. Much of it seems to have worn off as I've grown older though. I've heard the same thing being lamented by others. Maybe age has got something to do with it. Somehow, the farther removed the memories are from the present, the sweeter they seem to be. And the more fragmented they become, the lovelier they begin to seem.
It's the first of November. For some reason, winter has surprised me once again by arriving a little earlier than I expected. And yet again, it has succeeded in making me slip into a reverie of days long gone. November does that to me. Makes me want to chronicle memories.