My face is tingling and my fingers which have been throbbing because I kept them long enough outside the pockets to click a few images of the Hudson, frozen in parts, is thawing and humming alongside. I am still shivering though my nose is telling me that it is relieved to be back inside again, breathing the warm cosiness that is home.
I have been feeling strangely out of sorts for some time now. Ennui sounds immeasurably better than it feels. Who knows why I have been feeling this way but I shall tell you now that the icy winds by the Hudson whip them right out of the body. Everything just comes together out there, you know. The race tracks which are empty but for the gaggle of geese collecting at one end as if priming themselves up for a race, the old man in his signature yellow sweatshirt who inspires me with his tenacity to run outside in the bitter cold, the slabs of ice on the Hudson, the boulders all iced up that glisten in the soft-as-feather rays of the afternoon sun, the stray branches coated with icicles that sitting upon the boulders, the skein of ducks who bury their necks deep into their plump bodies so that you just see orbs of brown and white bobbing upon the waves, spiky hundreds of brown sweet gum balls gathering by the sides of the trails running through the park. Every bit counts.
ARUNDHATI BASU 