Hari Om
Today the word that is making itself known to me is ऋतु/Rtu - "season." We enter September and there is a definite sense of the planet shifting gears from the middle months to those which start to shut down the year.
In these northern climes, it is traditional to call the seasons four - spring, summer, autumn and winter. Yet there are also periods between them which are neither one nor the other - particularly in this second half of the year. One wonders if the Indian system might not apply more widely? (Climate change notwithstanding.)
India has six seasons defined. In Sanskrit, these are vasanta/spring, griishma/summer, varshaa/monsoon, sharad/autumn, hemant/cool season, and shishira/winter. The transition from the heat of summer into autumn brings much rain in the north too. These days, some of them are quite monsoonal in nature, as the preceding summers get hotter. It is also the case that autumn seems rather a long season here and, actually, there is a time in November that seems to be neither autumn nor winter. It absolutely fits into the concept of hemant.
There is something about the changing of seasons at any time which seems to trigger a sense of urgency to certain tasks... spring cleaning, harvesting, food preserving... and so many festivals in India celebrate these tasks as much as they offer up praise to the Higher. There are a plethora of utsavas during these few months - we've had Janmashtami, Onam, soon Chaturthi and Navratri and Diwali... It is good to acknowledge that everything we have is but a gift to us. Even time...
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