In Baroda where the summer stretches for almost nine months of the year, with the over lap during those months of a deluge of monsoon rains that turns up the humidity and heat to unbearable proportions, the brief passage of winter for three months is like a beautiful dream that one awakes from, all too quickly. Winter here just slips in over night. One day you wake up and you notice the nip in the air.

There is an assortment of things that mark the specialness of winter in Baroda for me. I have a traditional birdhouse in our garden and during these months I put out pieces of banana and sapodilla for the bulbuls, mynahs, magpies, crows and sparrows that descend like old friends each year. With the heat and dust at bay for a while, the garden displays its colours like a peacock strutting in courtship. The cats-tail bush, the white frangipani, the bursts of ixora, the blood red hibiscus and the bougainvillea provide me my own little Garden of Eden in this otherwise concrete jungle of city life. And as the twilight rolls in, the smell of campfires from the settlements of migrant labour that work on building sites, hang in the air weaving untold stories that feed my fertile imagination.

Diwali, which is the festival of lights, is celebrated this year on the 12th of November. The entire city dresses up the facades of their homes and buildings with electric fairy lights for this occasion. The more traditional and aesthetically inclined put out tiny terracotta oil lamps which soon have the moths transfixed to the glow of the flames, not unlike the mesmerized children who gaze up at the skies bejeweled with firecrackers that explode in kaleidoscopic splendor.

Now if only magic carpets were still an available commodity! I could have brought you all over to share this delightful season with me. However for the moment I shall content myself with wishing you seasons greetings for Diwali, or as we say in hindi ®