As many of us are busy gearing up for the semester-end exams, there are a few of us at debacle over nonchalantly skimming those textbooks or letting the reins free and giving up to the eternal conspiracy called fall. Care to pause?
Since we are halfway already, you might have as well perceived that November has a magic attached to it. It is a singular mystical month of vivifying charisma and enchantment. You may have realised why it has been aptly marvelled through centuries that this is a month of dreamy blends and ethereal transitions- The classical commixture of the growth with a pertinent hue of decline; fading elements of summer melting into the cajoling winter; the green canopies metamorphosing into the yellow perennial drizzle of leaves and the dryness of summer, restlessness of the rain all majestically making way for the calmness and with it, the silent hustles, the deepening melancholy. This is the time of the year which the fairy tales and dreams are made of. Think fall and you are reminiscent of the floating cloud, the faraway castles shrouded in mysteries, the vivaciously green meadows of some quixotically vivid shrubs dancing in the symphony of the western November breeze, the verdant mountains, the hills clad in the green blankets, the tranquil waters.. Lost, are you?
On the face of it, this is about what one identifies with the fall. This is about why November is a careless month.
But o the wretched fate, just when this euphoria starts caressing your minds, hearts and souls; the antidote of exam is waiting for you. What you just can’t help is giving yourself all those reasons which conclude that November is the worst time of the year for the exams. (P.S. I have no grudge against exams; I just have a fetish for November.)
First and foremost, this is the time of the year which, since eternity has been the most creative period in the eternal cycle of seasons. Come fall and the floodgates of ideas, dreams and visions are shattered open in a sort of conspiracy of the nature.
As Emily Bronte, observes, ” .. Ideas … have gone through and through me, like wine and water, and changed the colour of my mind.” It is only fair to conclude that if not for her ideas which conjured the withering heights, the world would certainly have been a less beautiful place.
So the examinations cruelly restrict the free play of the ideas. The opinions, dreams and ideas, before hitting their respective canvases, are sabotaged in the fear of the last week of November. The very existence of the acrid concept of exam lingering along the cobwebs in those unvisited vicinities of the mind, dissipate any parallel thought-process.
For the next reason, November is the best time for people among us who love to sleep. There, I said it. And believe me, it is a good enough reason, one of the best of reasons. Argue me if you haven’t felt your body surrender every time you close your eyes as much to a blink, to the fragrance of the invisible necromantic force as it sublimely lulls over you, narcotising you and hence taking you to its realms. And this happens invariably, no terms and conditions.
But now if you are done, get over. As the good ‘ol man used to say in schools, ”Go away. You have your exams.”
Nikhil Kumar