Atmosphere

If you were to be lost, where would you like to be lost? Do you have a memory of a place where you won’t mind forgetting your way? Do you indulge in it often?
Harsingar is a tree, which bears little white folwers, with orange stalks, in autumn. They pour down during the night, & cover the ground in a loose carpet. It’s probably the only flower, which might be offered to the deity, even after it’s picked from the ground. We had two trees in the house where I grew up. Sometimes, I’d spread newspaper sheets below the trees in the night, to save myself the labour of picking them up. Needless to say, the sheets flew away at night.
“Dushehra-Deepawali holidays” was a long stretch from the Durgashtami to Bhai Dooj. No school and no private tuitions, I’d have the entire morning to myself, to visit a friend, to go cycling, or to simply daydream under the Sun.
The sky would be blue as the sky, the morning, from a little after sunrise, till noon, would feel like time was bound at 10:00 am, roasting heat in the open, comfy cool in the shade. That’s autumn for me.
Whenever I get a whiff of Harsingar, I involuntarily start looking for the tree. If I’m dazzled in passing a white marble structure at midday, or some other thing makes me realize that it’s sunny blue above, I want to daydream for a moment.
I feel my childhood autumn.
I’m transported.
I’m at loss for words. It was the situation, the being. It’s not the time of the year, or the time of the day, the weather or the location, but the confluence. I loved existing there that day. It won’t return, but I remember the atmosphere.