Wintry warmth

Under the star studded winter sky, when people usually don’t prefer walks, he’d go out covering his neck with a pashmina scarf, holding a lantern that dissipated tangerine beams on to the deserted rack, glistening with frost. He would gulp the cold wind that hit his face. Winter was a Vanita art to him, aesthetically pleasurable than the “Ars moriendi” where wreck and decay were symbolic of new beginnings.

He’d return unusually earlier with a face numbed from cold and, the dying embers in the grate would give a crimson flush to his numbed nose. “There’s magic happening outside” he would say to me and I’d look at his now vigorous face and I would acknowledge with a smile. Winter was a sip of vintage to him, a balmy beam on the graveyard, a beautiful death he’d like to embrace. Sitting in his armchair, he would sip the hot joe, putting off the lights and gazing at me with the filtered beams of the lantern, he’d scribble on his diary :

” Do you notice the pride of this winter night, seems as if it has come after meeting you….do you see what benevolence it holds, drags me home a little early to be with you.”