The season of renewal and regeneration is about to cast a spell on us with its myriad hues and colours. This year the transition to spring in Kashmir was marked by a dry winter spell broken by the recent rains. The initiation to spring occurs with the blooming of narcissus (daffodils or Nargis or Yamberzael). Spring has always signified hope and renewal of life and is metaphorically invoked in Kashmiri to express good wishes and prayers like bahaar wuchun (witnessing spring), Phalun (to flower), and phoolyun (to bloom). Human imagination continues to be inspired by spring–it manifests itself as hope, art as well as life.
Be it the almond blossom at badamwaer (Almond Garden)or the marvel of tulips, spring is the season of rejuvenation. It is a bond of nature that keeps its word every year. The sordidness of winter gives way to many contours of life. The world seems to turn into a huge canvas where the artist with his strokes of brush and paint creates art. Artists and poets have celebrated this arrival of joy in their unique ways. Ghalib puts the arrival of spring through ecstatic joy:
phir is andāz se bahār aa.ī
ki hue mehr-o-mah tamāshā.ī
dekho ai sākinān-e-ḳhitta-e-ḳhāk
is ko kahte haiñ ālam-ārā.ī
The spring has come yet again
The sun and moon look in wonder
Behold, Oh inhabitants of dust
This is how the world is beautified! (Authors translation )
Cultures all over the world celebrate spring. Vasant or Basant Panchami, Holi and Baisakhi are celebrated in Northern India. In Japanese culture, spring is the season that celebrates uniqueness and individuality. Qubaitori (pronounced “oh-buy-toe-ree”) is a Japanese idiom that celebrates the uniqueness of each individual and discourages harsh and judgemental comparison with others. The word comes from the four trees that bloom in spring: cherry, plum, apricot, and peach. The word Oubaitori is written as a combination of the Japanese Kanji characters (symbols) for these four trees.
The flowers of each tree bloom at their own pace and time in the spring season. They have beautiful colours: shades of pink, mauve, blush and white. Each colour adds to the canvas of spring with its peculiarity and each tree yields a different fruit. Just like different flowers bloom at their own pace and have their distinct beauty, we humans bloom at our own pace and in our mysterious ways. A plum tree should not be in any race to be an apricot tree and vice versa. A caterpillar need not rush to be a butterfly. Spring teaches us the lesson that nature has programmed us all uniquely and we all need to celebrate what we are.
Spring is just not a season but a metaphor for literature as well as life. Chaucer began his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales “When April with its sweet showers comes, The drought of March has pierced to the root, And bathed every vein in such liquor, Of which virtue, the flower is engendered” (Modern Translation). It is the season where literal as well as metaphorical pilgrimages take place. The journey into a renewed self takes place after the ritual shedding of the autumn and the arrest of life in winter. The season is a rite of initiation for the propagation of life. The cycle of life continues as life sprouts once again. Seeds which may seem dead in the winter season are but the carriers of life. Shelley in “Ode to the West Wind” remarks:
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth. . .
Winter in itself is a proclamation that spring will be soon here. Hardship itself conceals the unlimited opportunities which human beings can unleash. Shelley proclaims in the same poem: “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” The Qur’anic verse: “So, surely with hardship comes ease.” ( Qur’an: Chapter 94; Verse 5) conveys the same message of spring. Human beings tend to compartmentalize seasons as well as conditions of life. Life transitions from one state to another with subtlety and ease. It follows the path of evolution rather than revolution. Winter steadily gives way to spring and each unfavourable condition in life eases into more favourable conditions. Each difficulty and question of life contains its answers. The answers need to be arrived at through tremendous patience and meticulous unlayering of each situation. Winter in itself is a witness that spring is on its way.
Ruskin Bond in his poem, “A Little Song of love” uses the imagery of the wild rose, new leaves, ultramarine sky, singing of blackbirds, and flapping of wild geese as the background of lovers celebrating spring together. However, spring doesn’t always start with happy beginnings. It more often is a time when the painful memories are revisited. Whenever we make new beginnings the baggage of what we have been carrying for long starts to weigh us down.
T S Eliot in his magnum opus The Wasteland calls April the “cruellest month.” The inverse reading of the season of colours is that in the modern world which is marked by alienation, fragmentation, and ennui even the spring is deconstructed. Through the blooming of delicate flowers like primrose and periwinkle, the poet muses on human condition “What man has made of man?” It is a time that reminds sensitive minds of things undone, promises not met, love that is lost, beauty that fades, and glory that is undone. Spring reminds us once again of the transitory nature of this world–how this beauty won’t last forever. The tender green of the leaves will transform into a darker shade of green as summer approaches, giving way to mellow yellow of the autumnal days. “Bahaar Aayi” by Faiz Ahmad Faiz (“It is Spring Again”) highlights the aching nostalgia that spring triggers in tender hearts:
bahār aa.ī to jaise yak-bār
lauT aa.e haiñ phir adam se
vo ḳhvāb saare shabāb saare
jo tere hoñToñ pe mar-miTe the
jo miT ke har baar phir jiye the
nikhar ga.e haiñ gulāb saare
jo terī yādoñ se mushkbū haiñ
jo tere ushshāq kā lahū haiñ
ubal paḌe haiñ azaab saare . . .
It is spring, And the ledger is opened again.
From the abyss where they were frozen,
those days suddenly return, those days
that passed away from your lips, that died
with all our kisses, unaccounted.
The roses return: they are your fragrance;
they are the blood of your lovers.
Sorrow returns. . . (Translation by Agha Shahid Ali)
(The Author is Assistant Professor. Head, Department of English SMS GDC Hyderpora)
