by Ramya Shankar
[box]What did it mean to experience snow for the first time in the U.S? Read on to find out. Text and pictures by Ramya Shankar. [/box]When I decided to pursue graduate studies in the US of A, weather definitely took the last spot in my list of factors to consider while selecting a university. Summer couldn’t be that bad, especially when you hail from the smoking hot city of Chennai. Fall and Spring would probably be like ‘Margazhi’, I assumed. And then there was the snow, of course! After 11 years in Delhi, and a vacation in Shimla, I thought I had seen winter and of course, snow too. And so, with thoughts of sledding, snowball fights and rotund snowmen, I chose Philadelphia over sunny California.
Initially, there wasn’t much to get accustomed to, other than the fact that there was daylight when I had breakfast, lunch and dinner! August and September were a breeze. I just had to do everything the way it was not done in India – right from turning switches on (I mean off!) to writing the date in the mm/dd/yyyy format. Without digressing further into the oddities and opposites, let me hop on to my third month in Philadelphia. October began with soft zephyrs which slowly intensified into gusty winds that threatened to sweep you off your feet in the most unromantic way. I’d broken two umbrellas by the end of October and did not want to invest in them further. Of course, the good thing was that there was no wading through knee-deep slushy water when the rains came. The river behind my apartment turned a nasty shade of brown from bottle green!
By the time I could mumble enough about the rains, came the chills, only increasing my mumbling a notch higher than usual. As the temperature decreased, the number of layers I had to stack on myself every morning increased. I could almost represent it as a function of time, only if the weather weren’t so erratic. There were numerous days when I would wear a presumably thick sweater only to find the sun shining bright by noon. And when I thought the sun was bright and I needed no jacket, the winds would make me cringe the moment I stepped out. From then on, it became a ritual every night to check the weather for the next day and decide what to wear or rather what not to wear!
It was halfway through December and there was still no sign of any snow. My friends couldn’t stop raving about how pretty the snow would look and showed much excitement about the arrival of a white Christmas. While people around were celebrating the holiday season, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. Ok, so it falls from the sky like cotton candy instead of droplets, and makes the roads look white and fluffy instead of brown and mucky. With that illusion registered in my head, I headed off to New Jersey to visit an aunt during the winter break. It was the next morning, after I had reached, that I woke up to utter chaos.
The television in the living room was blaring news of a historic snow storm like never before. Apparently, snow had accumulated to over two feet and people were trying to shovel snow off their porches and dig their cars. When I saw the snow for the first time, the whiteness of it made me want to jump on the smooth bed and embed my footprints on the crisp snow and let the cold sting my skin numb.
The view outside was nature at its picturesque best. It was magical and the song ‘Pudhu vellai mazhai’ from the Tamil movie ‘Roja’ buzzed continuously in my head. However, reality kicked in sooner than I had expected, when I decided to participate in the car excavation activity. Somehow digging out a car seemed more exciting than the porch shoveling. At one point, when we were almost done, my brilliant cousin realized that it wasn’t their car at all! After what seemed like ages, we managed to get the cars out from under the snow. I must admit here, despite not being a coffee lover, it was heavenly to hold the warm cuppa with my numb fingers later.
Well, if you thought stomping through snow is an ordeal, then walking on ice is a whole new ball game. Since the temperature was still below freezing point, the sun was of no help and the snow crusted to form ice. I realized that the trick is to actually be able to see the ice on the ground and circumvent it, or you’d land on all fours. And it took a few nasty falls and a pair of sheepskin boots to master the technique.
After all that historic snow, and numerous more flurries that spanned over three months, I’m positively done with snow. And no matter how much I complain and crib about the heat in Chennai, I will always be a warm-blooded Chennai girl!
Pics by Ramya Shankar
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