One fall in my life...

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"Autumn wins you best by this, its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay."
    The word fall is now mostly a North American English word for the season, Autumn. It traces its origins to old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear, the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall all being possible candidates. However, these words all have the meaning "to fall from a height" and are clearly derived either from a common root or from each other. The term came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year".
    The two countries that I have lived in never managed to define this one season. Oman was located in the middle of the desert, and India had its share of summer and heavy monsoon rains. So as a kid, the only choice left was to define my imagination of Autumn from vivid descriptions in the works of Enid Blyton and Oscar Wilde.
    September 2009. I was sent onsite from my company and after a couple of weeks in CA, I moved to WA. My first impression of WA was that it rained all the time, gloomy and depressing (for all the fans of Rock, Nirvana lead singer, Kurt Cobain had committed suicide in Seattle, WA). Readers, please note: It had nothing to do with my presence :|.
    One of the best parts of my travel included a trip to the Puyallup fair. It was on certain accounts similar to the fairs we have in India (sans the Barbequed pork ribs and hotdog stands :D) But the biggest attraction included the pumpkins on display. Halloween was right round the corner and the beautifully carved pumpkins were a lovely sight. Halloween also included a costume party, and kids dressed up with the "trick-or-treating." My good old friend, Dawn took me on a couple of drives to the Sammamish/Issaquah are especially around Lake Washington where the trees were in the peak of their shedding season.
     My daily trip to the office inluded a walk past the same bunch of trees and during my tenure I got to see the leaves changing colour from green to yelloe to red and finally brown before they were floored. It amazed me that Autumn could be so beautiful, although it represented the end of the complete cycle of the trees that bore fruit.
    Through the season, I lived a childhood dream, a dream that had matured from the countless books that I read as a kid. And perhaps the Autumn of 2009 also depicted my first and last fall in a long long time to come.
    "Yellow, mellow, ripened days, Sheltered in a golden coating; O'er the dreamy, listless haze, White and dainty cloudlets floating; Winking at the blushing trees, And the sombre, furrowed fallow; Smiling at the airy ease, Of the southward flying swallow Sweet and smiling are thy ways, Beauteous, golden Autumn days."

Comments

  1. Simply MeJuly 5, 2010 at 4:10 AM

    Like it :) I'll also spend one Autumn of my life in the US. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. induravisinghjFebruary 6, 2012 at 11:57 PM

    Refreshing post,love to read :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. subhorup dasguptaFebruary 7, 2012 at 12:56 AM

    Could identify with your feeling as I too have never experience Fall outside of the movies and the books. Enjoyed reading. Lovely pics.

    ReplyDelete
  4. D.NambiarFebruary 8, 2012 at 8:04 PM

    What a coincidence,I just put up some autumn pictures on my blog http://dnambiar11.blogspot.com/2012/02/fall-flashback.html
    For those of us who haven't grown up in places where you get to see Fall colours once a year, it's really fascinating, right? I miss looking out of my window and seeing those shades of yellow and orange.

    ReplyDelete

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