And take from seventy springs a score...

I experienced the magic of spring for the first time in my life when I came to Hong Kong. Till then my understanding of spring was limited to Geography textbooks, poetry and Bollywood. I have never experienced even autumn in Mumbai – definitely not the way I do now. The leaves do shed; that's the law of nature; but probably the extent differs because the climate is much more moderate than in Hong Kong or maybe it's nature vs nurture - a typical Mumbaikar never really has the time or intent to smell the proverbial flowers. I was blessed to be surrounded by nature and greenery all my life but even then the charm of autumn and spring eluded me; that is till I reached Hong Kong where the seasons are stark in comparison and so is their beauty.

The cuckoo's call always brought the annual examinations and wasn't a very pleasant sound then. But how I long to hear the cuckoo now! Its shrill call gives a divine feeling of respite after an uncomfortable winter! The ecstasy on seeing the small green shoots on barren stems, the azaleas that take over the city, the sudden appearance of insects and butterflies, and of course the smell of spring - these are experiences that I never had in Mumbai. The complex and beautiful emotions that these magical occurrences in nature give birth to are so difficult to fathom!

"Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more."

"And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room…"

A. E. Housman laments that he's already lived twenty years of his seventy, and has just fifty magical springs left to experience!

It is only when I let spring give me as much as it wishes to that I experience how intense these emotions are!

A feeling of carpe diem! Sieze the moment!