Advocate Mehboob
Shahjahan Virk
HAVING it already in the air lets welcome together Keats season of mists and mellow fruitful ripeness. Twenty 20 has really been a very scary year, so to get distracted for a moment from the havocs which it brought would be quite relieving. We can resort to the calmness of this short-lived visitor to balm the trauma and to ease the strain.
Autumn has always been poet’s season. Normally the celebrated season of the romantics is spring because of its new beginnings but the beauty of the fall is unparalleled. It’s charms and gentleness are pretty much arousing for the poets and writers.(maybe same has worked in my case also as I feel inclined to write again after a year only in the very season). It never fails to bewitch the aesthetics with its chaste appeal. As John Clare blaming his madness on autumn said that it never failed to swaddle him in a ‘stupor of chilling indisposition’. In fact its fine air carries a temperate sharpness about it.
Literature has found a great fascination with the season. The melancholic mood of it unavoidably attracts the writers everywhere and thus has found place in the writings of every culture. Much has been written, said and sung about it. Autumn has its own songs, colours and aroma to offer. Pale-warm is its colour. The most reminiscent of the characteristics of it is the yellow colour leaves scattered all around the pathways. For this of its virtue it is referred to as the fall in American English.
“There is something incredibly nostalgic and significant about the annual cascade of autumn leaves.”(Wheeler). It carries along its own gifts and pleasures. It has its own days and nights. Friedrich Nietzsche who was especially crazy after this time of the year explained the sort of music which he really sought that it ought to be “cheerful and profound like an afternoon in October…”.It really is cheerful and profound both. The evenings are particularly captivating. They are inevitably impactful. It feels like as if one’s heart has also let itself get sunk with the setting sun far there at the horizon.
Its colours are warm and vibrant. Landscape becomes richer; fruits and food seem riper and tastier and the countryside truly becomes alive. Its hazy sky becomes cool to behold. “Wonderful clarity, autumn colours, an exquisite sense of well-being emanating from all things,” wrote Nietzsche upon arriving in Turin. It is particularly so in case of countryside where peasants have glee on their faces seeing the fruit of their labour ripe right before their eyes resultantly bringing prosperity to their homes. That’s why Urs and Melas in our culture normally take place in this part of the year. “Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.” Jim Bishop
This is a time of festivities. Many once-a-year events and musical nights are slated for these days. People like to throw parties and hold their weddings during this season. Even the top most political event of the world at the United Nations happens at the start of autumn each year in New York, not to mention the Nobels and other such high profile events. Its peace and serenity makes it the favourite choice. Autumn is a time to reflect.
This saintly of the seasons has much to do with soul too. “Autumn is more the season of soul than of nature,” Nietzsche again. It’s true. Each time we have it come, there is a stir, the ripples in the still segments of the soul. It feels like an awakening call. It’s like being given another chance or a reminder. As if it were the time of new beginnings, of shedding the leaves of impurity to have them replaced with the buddings of innocence. There is something so soulful about it. It carries a mystic aura with it. Let us hope and pray that this autumn proves to be beatific for all of us bringing an end to the turbulent times which the world is in. “Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, sand if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”—George Eliot.
—The writer is a lawyer.
