SPRING: LET IT BLOOM AND BLOSSOM

By SHABBIR AARIZ

Nature always asks for and extracts a price for having pleasures and enjoying its beauty and to which we too are not an exception. That is exactly the story of the winter gone by we have endured this time. Undoubtedly its harshness has claimed much of our comforts draining warmth out of us and denying us the proper supplies of electricity and much needed essentials. It has affected the communication and connectivity. Yet it has snow washed the forests, meadows, mountains and fields of sinful vandalism by none other than man. Above all, it has harbored a season of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth. One is reminded of Thomas Hardy and his poem “ A Backward Spring” written in the month of April 1917 while Spring is knocking a few days away leaving grass, bushes and rose buds anxious and the anxiety is described in a poetic way by Hardy for Spring to come and says, “ And whether next week will pass….. free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush” and also forget and not ruminate about the harshness of the winter saying, “ And never to ruminate on or remember…. What happened to it in mid-December?” The winter, therefore, has given birth to the season of spring for plants to grow and flowers to blossom which are tender but energetic, delicate but vivid. The season that is a poet’s delight and a wholesome presentation of beginning of a new life. It has again established its victory over the harshness, rigidity and cruelty unleashed by the season gone by. It is a declaration of joy and happiness as infused into everything and anything living from trees, plants, flowers to birds building their new nets after giving up hibernation and humans shimmering again. The spring that has come with a new cycle of life that birds from warmer places bring on their feathery wings. With the arrival of cuckoos, has arrived the joy that spring brings from the cliffs of despair hurled by the gloom of winter. The joy hard to refuse and impossible to prevent. It is bound to create a situation to make important decisions withheld by worst moods in the shady and stormy winter. It is bound to make gloomiest person happy and also bring a new hope to a farmer. At the sight of a riot of colors and almond blossoms, desires and aspirations tend to blossom too. Colors of Asia’s largest tulip garden overseen by a range of Zbarwan mountains, peeping through the clouds, bring some color to one’s life luckily neighboring the vastness of Dal lake.
The way the spring is enthusing, it drives me mad. It also gives me a sense of pride to have been born in the month of May which is the prime of spring in Kashmir. Without giving into any superstition, I take it as auspicious to have so born as I feel ice melting inside me the way it melts on the surface of and in the depths of mountains to charge the brooks and streams cutting through the quiet around. It lets me never stay home any longer but gets me out to breathe again, sometimes with friends and often alone in compliance of my bondage with the season. Living in the neighborhood of the snow queen Gulmarg, remains my immediate destination for the place and its wilderness opens up its arms to anyone and everyone including me undeterred by the vortex of conflicts within wearing a façade and shield of sense of humor biting inside than amusing and entertaining to others. Spending time out is eternal delight for eyes and soul. It, somehow, takes me to the next level of existence. I feel better placed in life than those who miss this glory in pursuit of riches making their way to over urbanized cities where the monotony of concrete jungle feeds on their peace and pleasure, depriving them of the of the soulful sight of bloom and blossom, daffodils emerging from the earth and butterflies dancing around flowers and above all the positive thoughts of the future coming to mind. Spring and hope go hand-in-hand. It is very true that hope does not melt away in summer, autumn or perish in winter. But the way hope greets one in spring, no other season has that craft to match spring. Spring in itself is like hope. As the hope is like a bridge that actively transports an individual from darkness to light, from entrapment to liberation and from evil to salvation, similarly spring is as already said, rebirth and renewal from the icy gloom of winter to new blossom. One only needs to recognize and absorb that spring is a season of hope and one needs have some kind of faith, if not religious but certainly some kind of spiritual to ground one’s hopes. Spring is a dream and so is, according to Aristotle, the hope; “ a waking dream”. The French writer, Francois de La Rochefoucauld added that hope can “lead us to the end of our lives by an agreeable route.” And the spring season at least paves that kind of route.
(A leading lawyer and eminent poet, author can be reached at: [email protected])