Of winters and icy rain and crystal trees

I am not very fond of the cold and the winters. Never liked them. Not that I like hot summers either. Staying in BGLR for almost a decade spoiled me to the extremes of temperature.

Remember those cold mornings in DGP ... waking up to go to school was such a torture. The lowest we ever had was perhaps 4 degrees Centigrade but so what ... there were no heaters at the time (I mean central heating for the whole house), the floors were cold, there was no hot water in the taps. I would wake up and sit on bed and shed tears for being the lone miserable creature in the entire world who had to wake up so early in the morning. My parents would be awake by then but they did not count.

When for my engineering college, I had the choice of Kanpur vs Chennai, I had no hesitation to choose Chennai -

Since then I must have lived in some cold places. Boston, Swiss, upstate NY. And something happens when I set foot in a place. Like Boston had one of its coldest winters and snowstorms in over 80 years. Zurich had its longest winters and 2 days of non stop snowing in April - never heard of before. Well, it does not stop there ... when we landed in ALB last year, it had 22 inches of snowfall, one of the worst in recent years.

Three days back we had icy rain. The weather foecasts were predicting wintry mixes and icy rain, like they always do and I did not pay much attention. We have had icy rains before ... they are bad than the snow but not really that bad.

This time it was different. It rained through the night. When we woke up in the morning, the power was out. A rare event where we live. Nothing works if there is no electricity - no stove, no heater, no phone, no internet, no TV. My husband went to work. My cellphone was water damaged during out trip to Hawaii and I was lazy to get it repaired. No means of communication.
Thankfully, the boiler was working and I managed to get a nice, hot water bath.

Outside, the scene was beautiful, was picture perfect. All the trees and beanches were covered up with ice. Looked amazing like crystal. When the sun shone through the clearing gray skies, it was even more magnificent. I bet the whole of Northeast shone and glowed and glistened...ok, whatever, I cant find the right enough word.

It started getting colder inside as the temperature dropped degree by degree and I started piling layers of warm clothing around myself and snuggled into the sofa. Wondered when the power would come, and wondered how dependent our lives had become on electricity. If it became any colder, I decided I would go aprk in my car. Gasoline prices have fallen recently, so I thought that should be ok.

We were some of the lucky few who got power by evening. And when I connected with the rest of civilization, I came to know about the havoc wreaked. Trees had fallen, sometimes smashing cars, tranformers had burst, more than a million homes had lost power - half of them dont have any even 3 days later and some of them may take 3-4 days more, ... all because of an inch of icy rain! Forces of nature are mighty indeed!