Spice of Life | Cold wave, but no dearth of warmth in our hearts

There’s something about the spirit of the state that takes everything with a smile. Even a season that is to be suffered! There’s hardly a household in Punjab that doesn’t make handsome quantities of pickle and then does not share it among friends.

“We’re buying warm home shoes for the first time this winter,” said a friend living in Europe in a phone conversation, explaining the wrath of the energy crisis. Most people in the West are used to having a permanently warmed house and this winter an exorbitant increase in energy prices has forced them to look for primitive methods of conserving energy and staying warm.

As much as I felt sorry for her plight, I could not help smirking, thinking about how I had been handling the cold wave in my hometown of Hoshiarpur. (Hindustan Times)

As much as I felt sorry for her plight, I could not help smirking, thinking about how I had been handling the cold wave in my hometown of Hoshiarpur. January has to be suffered and endured in Punjab. The slow-moving life of Hoshiarpur has a nonchalant charm to it. We rely on quilts heavier than our own weight and woollens that are always flooding out of cupboards. For, where in the world would you have a situation where the temperature is the almost sub-zero and there is no power to use the heater?

And, if you get uninterrupted power, there is always someone to tell you about the disadvantages of having a room heated for too long and it’s not odd to find someone blaming you in jest for the severity of the weather, “thand badi karti”. I have never understood the meaning of this phrase but I think it is a polite way of uplifting someone’s spirits by giving them almost godly control over the weather. Power or no power, the sun’s brief appearance in this weather is time for celebration.

It is common to invite people for “dhupp sekna (basking in the sun)”. The choice of snacks offered in that invitation is peanuts or tangerines. High calorific value foods are consumed during this season to keep the body warm, while there is no science to it but it gives an alibi to people like me to be a ‘saag’ taster in the neighbourhood. I can almost name the family from their ‘saag’ recipe. This entire effort of keeping ourselves warm through our ‘desi nuskhas’ also makes me feel part of a close-knit yet cosmopolitan culture. Where else would one find women of all ages endlessly chit-chatting across a mound of pea shells or men wrapped up in long shawls, discussing the socio-politico situation over a bonfire?

There’s something about the spirit of the state that takes everything with a smile. Even a season that is to be suffered! There is hardly a household in Punjab that does not make handsome quantities of pickle and then does not share it among friends.

Sending pickles to friends in winter is a way of keeping the warmth of friendships kindling. It is only in Punjab that you can be stopped on the road, almost forcefully, for “Chaah da langar”. A conversation over a cup of tea is complimentary. And should your internet not work, you can trust the odd milkman, farmer, or truck driver’s description of fog and visibility on the road ahead.

My friend’s call made my heart fill with pride and gratitude for my roots.

While Punjab is battling a cold wave, there is no dearth of warmth in our hearts because our heaters are in our hearts, not the fields of the Ukraine-Russia war.

The writer is a Hoshiarpur-based freelance contributor and can be reached at sannakaushal@gmail.com.