This is my first spring in the United States. Spring has already graduated into summer and was followed by my nostalgia.

Spring has always meant blooming flowers, even in India. Regardless of where one is in India, one will be celebrating the regional New Year. That might mean one’s own New Year, or that of the neighbors. 

Spring in North Carolina has been beautiful. From the color-confused leaves to bright yellow sunlight, it has been nothing short of breathtaking, natural beauty. Spring in Raleigh has been like a walk in the majestic garden compared to a roller coaster of celebrations in India. India is like a boiling pot of religions, each with its own new year, adding more flavors. All of them mark their calendars new with the onset of spring. Some celebrate the harvest season and some rejoice the break of the cold spell. 

Yet spring brings more joy than just the one-day public holidays in India. If football and basketball draw crowds in the U.S., cricket draws humongous riots in India ―enough to cause shifts in the economy. Spring also means a cricket-crazy nation wakes up to the biggest cricketing extravaganzas of the Indian Premier League and, every fourth year, the Cricket World Cup. 

The mercury is rising, unabated. As the contrast of shadows of green leaves with the sunlit ground grows, my mind rolls over to lazy summer afternoons spent doing nothing. Doing nothing is rarely on schedule now – I decide to fight with my priorities to give laziness its previous berth in my schedule, right at the top, but I know a lost cause when I see one.

Rising temperatures meant juicy yellow mangoes. Every summer, holidays and mangoes spelled heaven. The mango requires torrid temperatures. Although India is infamous for its heat, there are these subtle joys that other places remain deprived of. 

When the sun forces the mother to call the child inside, board games take up the mantle. Monopoly and Scrabble are almost summer personified. With the Hunt Library offering the game lab, I wonder if I have found a substitute. Only time will tell.

Everything from the serene mornings to the late evenings, with its bright yellow sunlight, begs for more attention. One questions if projects and assignments were included when nature sought out to balance the elements of life. 

I find resonance in a sociologist’s words. To quote Shiv Visvanathan, “We need to see time not as something to be filled up or planned but as a ritual to be lived out.” Summer is a realization of the same. It beckons me to revive the child in me

Yet some days I wonder whether all the seasons are cheering for spring as it defeats the child in me.