A Date with the Equinox

Geographer at heart

 I’ve been meaning to write about the equinox for some years now. The weather: maximum and minimum temperatures, rainfall, dates of the monsoon, eclipses and so on were of great interest to my father. All of us, his children, inherited his love of natural phenomena, and of observation. The little box in the bottom corner of The Statesman - Babuji's favourite paper - gave us all the relevant weather data for the day, including the times of sunrise and sunset.

Southbound

Navaratri/Durga Puja 

With climate change, we don’t seem to have much of temperate weather. Seasons change overnight. One misses all the ‘tween seasons; especially ‘September-October weather’ - ‘full sleeves weather’ as 'my old friend and confidante Mademoiselle Kitty' reminded me. It’s the stuff of dreams and memories now.

In Delhi, the excitement would build slowly. The wind changed direction. Fluffy clouds filled the skies as the monsoon withdrew. There was the scent of harshringar/coral jasmine late at night, or the smell of leaves burning in the park as I walked home from the bus stop after school play rehearsals, late in the afternoon.

The first time we stayed back after school was for an extra Geography class with Miss Sophie Baretto, who said we were lagging behind and must get through 'Rotation and Revolution' quickly.

The school buildings were deserted except for us girls of Six B, sitting in our newly constructed second floor classroom, with its new green blackboard on which chalk pieces squeaked and broke in two. Miss Baretto drew a diagram with four earths in different positions around the sun on four days: March 21, June 21, September 23 and December 22. One single line from the sun in the centre touched the lines representing the equator or the tropics on each earth.

That afternoon we learnt about the earth’s tilted axis and how that gave us summer and winter, the longest day and longest night, as well as the marvel of the Equinox, when day and night were equal all over the world.

Pic by Viji - with whom I visited the dear old school in May - 43 degrees C that day!!

Some years ago my brother Raja – upon whom was inflicted the indignity of collecting me after Miss Baretto’s extra class – Raja and I started noting down sunset and sunrise timings of the days leading up to the autumnal equinox. We thought that it might not occur on September 23rd at all, since our October evenings were much darker than December evenings. 

The equinox, or 12/12, occurred about a week off the date in Delhi. That same day, in Dibrugarh, Assam, I was two minutes short! That is, my ‘day’ was 12 hours and two minutes long. Imagine our surprise when the next day gave us a reading of 12 hours and one minute, and the one after was 11 hours and 59 minutes. Had we bypassed the equinox?

You gave me the answer 

On September 23rd, the sun rose at 4:59 and set at 5:05. The weather app on my phone says day and night will be equal tomorrow, that is on September 28th. But just yesterday, I read that this is called the 'Equilux'. Most appropriate, since it enlightened me! Raja found an article that explains it all clearly: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/equilux.html

'Daylight is good at arriving at the right time', wrote George Harrison, and it will continue to do so for some time. Season's greetings to all of you!

Gowri

September 2022

Here's one WhatsApp image I actually liked - from last year, as you can see!

Forward, March!

There was a time in my life when March meant school exams, and for years after, it came to mean that thing we all dread in tea, drought. The days are long gone when drought was the only obstacle to a splendid season ahead!
 
Every time the cold weather ended in the Dooars, it was dry and droughty. The longest drought that we experienced there lasted over 130 days. All the minor vegetation looked as if it was set to go up in flames.All except for the trees; the trees would put out leaf buds.

At this time of year, I long to visit Chalsa forest. There's a fragrance in the air that is as difficult to capture and hold as the fleeting season itself. Some traces of it linger under citrus trees, especially under the pomello and the 'curry patta'.  We spent a lifetime in the Dooars, and its forests, rivers and hills will always be ‘ours’ to treasure in my mind.

Time to return to the here and now: Easter lilies are popping up to keep late dahlias and other cold weather blooms company and the grass is green!

We moved to Upper Assam two years ago. There's much here that is the same as the Dooars world, but the climate is completely different. Weather patterns have changed over the last decade quite drastically everywhere, but these are my observations of the moment.

We’ve had rainy spells around the end of the cold weather that have lasted for three to four days. Days and nights were never so cold in December. The sun drives winter back into hiding in cupboards with sweaters and knitting baskets for company.
The mighty river that flows at the garden's northern boundary is at the heart of all things here. Our skies – ‘Brahmaputra blue’ - are the deepest blue I’ve ever lived under. The nights skies are spectacular.

P.S. The night of the equinox was rainy with chilly winds.