Some like it cold

I love winters. The kinds where you are chilled to the bone. You wear a cap, gloves and muffler and still shiver. The kinds that makes your eyes water and the tip of your nose, red.

I started missing the winter when I moved to Bombay and could no longer experience the windy, bone-chilling winter of the US that I was used to. It was then that I started craving trips to Delhi in the winter to be able to feel the chill again. I did manage a few trips to be honest, and expectedly they were a blast!!

On one of the trips, my friends & I walked around Connaught Place all day in a Santa hat with lights (LOL) and even went to a bar wearing them. It was Christmas. On another trip, we had kaala-khatta at India Gate at 2 in the morning!! It was so cold we couldn’t even hold the damn thing properly.

Winters in the US are excruciating. Temperatures fall below 0 degrees Celsius and what makes it worse is the wind. God, it’s windy in that part of the world!! Only a heavy-duty L.L.Bean, J.Crew or North Face jacket can save you from dying.

One of my most memorable winters was during my Sophomore year when it snowed in North Carolina after 20 years. The state hadn't got snow in a long time, so it took the city some time to put snow clearing activities in action. Classes were cancelled for a week as professors who lived in the Raleigh-Durham area, which is a 30-40 minute drive from Chapel Hill and which is where most of the professors lived, couldn’t make it to Chapel Hill. The boys stole huge plastic trays from dinner halls (hiding them inside their over-sized jackets) so we could sled in the snow. We rolled about in the snow, had snow fights, and took pictures. Life had come to a standstill in the small town of Chapel Hill. Thank God the pizza delivery guys were still working or we would’ve died of starvation because no restaurants were open! You can always rely on them Gumby’s & Papa John’s guys :)