It is now official: the bad news, that is. Last week, a meteorologist at Calcutta’s Regional Meteorological Centre declared that the mercury had begun to rise, as it were, signalling the passing of yet another all-too-fleeting winter. The winter of 2025-26, some Calcuttans would insist, did leave its mark on the city’s skin: 19 consecutive days of below normal maximum temperature — the minimum temperature had even fallen to 10.2°Celsius earlier this month, the lowest in 13 years — were a welcome novelty. This is because the Calcutta winter is perceived to be a benign entity, a fairy of mist and wistfulness, albeit without her teeth.
But is that really the case?
Winter’s anodyneness in this part of the world is the consequence of our stubborn — erroneous — habit of measuring its potency through cold, calculable, atmospheric indices — temperature, chill, condensation, mist and, increasingly, AQI. But winter also has a self that eludes the markers of scientific precision; it wields, as do some other seasons, an immense psychological force, leaving a trace on our inner lives that is deeper than its meteorological imprint. By this psychic, oracular, even preternatural, measure, winter in Calcutta is a deceptively potent force.
Consider winter’s diverse revelatory powers. In a culture that fetishises pace, winter is the season that teaches us the value of slowness; in a society trapped in the spell of instantaneous gratification, ownership, possession, the cold season illuminates the finer edges of loss and longing; at a time when collective aesthetic tastes overwhelmingly favour the gaudy and the garish, winter bears the gift of all things mellow: the dulcet light of a wintry afternoon falling in shafts through the remaining foliage at the Maidan can still bewitch the city, if only momentarily.
Other things, spheres and structures closer home — literally — material yet abstract, palpable but also intangible, come to life, shapeshift, in the embrace of Calcutta’s winter. Consider the changes that bloom in our relationships with specific architectural spaces at home. For most of the heat-soaked or rain-drenched year, the terrace is, literally and metaphorically, an outlier; removed from the torso of the house or, these days, of a flat, it belongs to the exterior. But not so in winter: winter reclaims the terrace for us, flooding it with its mild light and balminess, making it accessible, democratic, by turning it into a hive of pleasures, familial or solitary, forthright or furtive — soaking in the warmth (and the memory) of a quilt that was shared with a loved one the night before; the slow, magical immersion of the mind into the pages of a dog-eared, dear book; gazing at how the glistening oil inside a jar of pickle turns into a shade of amber with the touch of the mellow sun…
The liminal nature of some other domestic spaces also comes to light in this season. The verandah is one such space. During most other seasons, our engagement with the verandah is perfunctory: the balcony, more often than not, is a spatial, also aural and visual, register of the many dins of sundry labour — the heavy thud of sodden clothes being hung on the clothesline followed by that distinctive dribbly noise; the splash of water being poured on pots with plants; or the swish of a broom and the subsequent explosion of dust particles. But in winter, labour also accommodates leisure and, in the process, the verandah/balcony becomes an enchanting, also strange, conduit between the private and the public, making it possible, all at once, to read a personal — intimate — text on the phone, or send a reel to a special recipient, while also eyeing the world in motion below.
Winter also enlivens micro spaces, the proverbial poor cousins in the domestic architectural arrangement. The window sill/ledge, the gatherer of dust, gossamer webs, dead leaves, detritus (cigarette butts, clothes pegs, crumpled paper) at other times, is suddenly renewed: for new winter plants, some of which quaintly turn their heads and follow the sun, now occupy the window sill that is, as a result, no longer the forlorn collector of refuse.
There is also that bit on the ageing wall: ill with patches of dampness and mildew sprouting through much of the rainy season, it begins to dry — heal — during winter, revealing strange, hieroglyphical stipplings that shine in the noon’s genial light, teasing the mind, juvenile and adult, and the imagination.
Summer — its telltale signs are beginning to appear — also brings its own set of renegotiations with lived spaces, pushing us inside, towards the interior, towards interiority, in the direction of cooler nooks and corners, spaces that lie, like the house lizard, dormant during winter. Shadowy passages, shaded studies, cool floor-tiles, even the bhnarar ghor (pantry) — does it still exist? — perpetually awash in a diffused darkness, are awakened by summer’s coarseness and torridity — as sites of refuge, repose, and reflection.
The prevailing discourse on architecture and its appendages is usually undergirded by the assumption of their solidity and their aesthetic appeal. This is understandable. For the mind intrinsically associates buildings and their associated elements with the notion of permanence: they are meant to withstand, endure, the vagaries of seasons. Their aesthetic peculiarities are also reflected upon quite frequently. For instance, an informed piece by Ankan Kazi on the website of the Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) notes how the balcony, or even the baithakkhana, has, over the years, not only been reimagined as an intermediary between the private realm and the world outside but also functioned as a site of aesthetic/artistic production: the Tagore brothers, Abanindranath and Gaganendranath, painted the balcony of their famous residence quite often.
But it takes the wiliness of winter, even a soft Calcutta winter, to sow a mischievous seed of doubt, perhaps even dispel the certitude that the stilts which uphold and the spaces that constitute the architectural cosmos of home are perpetually sturdy, non-negotiable, immutable. These structural elements, the season of mellow light and longing shows, shift, in a manner of speaking, as does our relationship with each. The terrace, the balcony, the window ledge are foregrounded by winter while summer relegates them, despite their visibility and frontage in terms of location, to the recesses of our minds.
Are we then to believe, still, that a season that can seemingly move minds and spaces lacks a bite?
uddalak.mukherjee@abp.in