The Spring Sonata

The wind picks up the leaves, creating swirls and eddies in the late afternoon sun. Butterflies flit through the garlic shoots, reflecting for a moment to stay. The crow, insistent on the tamarind branch, surveys the world with beady, supercilious eyes. Down below, cavorting squirrels lose themselves in an amorous game of loving and letting.

It's almost over—the slow, blurry days of winter. You can feel it: the season preparing reluctantly for its farewell, occasionally bringing in cold winds from the north, more as afterthought than rebound. Warm, dry days trumpet their arrival—the wind prodigiously shaking gnarled branches, littering red soil with tattered russet leaves.

And then there is the sky—the vast dome that stretches far and wide dipping gently into the horizon. As the afternoon sun completes its daily run and slowly fades out, smearing the western edge of the mountains with pastel hues, the sky above begins to put out its show. Hours pass, darkness envelopes the land. But above, constellations appear, one by one—their shimmering brilliance quietly drawing us away from ourselves, nudging us to reflect on life's provenance and inevitability.

The village is in the midst of harvesting the season's first crop. Days begin with men, women and children bundling themselves into any available transport that will drop them off to the fields. The soundscape crackles with improvised film songs and exuberance of children that promise to break the monotony. All through the day tractors ply back and forth carrying the day's labour to weighing stands, where produce and price will change hands. For many, it appears, this has been a bountiful year.