Santa season

It’s getting cooler in Mumbai these days and the nights are a lovely time to sit on the window and watch the lights. Once upon a time it may have been pinpoints of starlight that people could count; today, it is the varicoloured sparkle of traffic, zipping past on the roads that inevitably wind around and through residential areas of the city. There are the flashing lights of the ambulances, way too many for my comfort, their passage orchestrated by the whine of their alarm sirens. There are the streamers of fluorescence from the lines of small lights along the bridge and the trailing tendrils of brightness that show the wakes of large trucks with larger headlamps. At this time of year, these glint and glow through the faint mist that comes with darkness and dawn, settling like a light sheet over the roads and green spaces.

In Delhi, where I lived for a while, you knew that winter had arrived when you couldn’t feel your toes and you couldn’t see your front gate from your living room window (that is presuming you could normally see it from that perspective, of course!). I always have cold feet – literally, not metaphorically speaking – and so knew well when the weather was turning frosty; my toes would be froze even as my upper lip beaded with tiny droplets of sweat during a brisk walk or a romp with the cat. Before the sweaters, the jackets and the warm woolly underwear, I would root through the stored clothes and find socks, the heavier and warmer the better. And there would almost always be an extra blanket or throw over my feet when I snuggled under my quilts. Perhaps one of the most traumatic experiences I ever had in college was during a Halloween evening out, when my boots were soaking wet and my feet were dead blocks of ice, even though the rest of me was fairly warmly clad in miniskirt, sweatshirt and tights.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this time of year in Mumbai is Christmas. Amusing, because it is not an Indian festival, but we, as good Indians, have adopted it with the excuse that any reason to party is a good one. So we have Christmas balls, Christmas dinners, Christmas puddings and even Christmas goose – one of which my boss hopes to cook for himself, his own, one presumes! Funniest of all are the Santa Clauses parked all over the city, in stores, in large and fancy hotels, in schools and college campuses, in the friendly neighbourhood bookstore…and I almost squeaked as I jumped to find one of those behind me as I browsed through the crime section! At every major traffic junction I find sad-eyed but smiling vendors trying to sell me cotton-bordered and pom-pom-bedecked Santa hats, or a small figure of the jolly fat man on a bouncy elastic string to hang from my rear-view mirror.

For me, Christmas has always been a special time of year. From the hot apple cider to the fragrance of pine needles, from the succulent home-cooked ham to the veggies and sour-cream-onion dip, from the presents to the midnight mass, everything is a memory that is almost all good and bright and beautiful. While I may have worked out the truth that Santa is not a real person, but someone pretending to be one, I still believe in the Saviour, joy to the world and seeing the star light up the centre of truth and the future. After all, I watch for that star almost every night!