Spring Is No More.

March is here. It’s that time of the year when winter loses its strength and is about to come to an end. It’s so saddening that the good part of the year only lasts for a month or two, for in a few weeks summer will be here in its full glow. Summer…the word itself is enough to run drops of sweat down my back. I detest everything about this time; from the scorching heat to the sweaty clothes, from the heat waves to the dehydration, I hate it all. It’s not just me, everyone hates summer today. A few thousand die every year because of the various heat waves that strike throughout the season. Life is, indeed, tough now, because not even air conditioners help when the average temperature is about and around 50 ºC. The only relief we get is when it drizzles once in a blue moon, but that too is becoming rare. Life is very hard.

But it wasn’t always like this, I’ve heard. Grandma tells me that there weren’t always two seasons; winter and summer were separated by spring, the most beautiful season of all. I’ve heard a lot of myths about spring, like how it was the time of the year when you really felt alive. I've heard that there were flowers, other than the artificial ones which we have today, blooming in the various gardens throughout the city. There were also beautiful trees. The only tree I’ve seen is the deciduous one next to Grandpa’s grave; I wish that I could see more.

Grandma speaks about trees a lot. She tells how the trees were lush green during the spring. She tells how squirrels, who are now extinct, ran up and down the trees, while grandma and grandpa enjoyed the scenery of their garden in their youth. These trees combined with the blooming, fragrant flowers and creatures like butterflies and squirrels and the wind made such a melody and atmosphere, that it was impossible for grandma and grandpa to not dance their hearts out. She remembers those days as the time of her life.

I sometimes feel…jealous of my grandma. How beautiful and romantic her life must have been? This romance feels different from the concept we have today. We don’t have gardens to dance in today, nor do we have the melody created by wind and trees. The only things we have today are text messages and iPhones, and we mistake their use for romance.

This feeling of jealousy increased when grandma told me that she once saw two million cherry trees in a glimpse at Caceres, when grandpa took her there for their anniversary. Grandma describes her time there as the most beautiful time of her life. She says that she’ll remember that spring at Caceres, for as long as she lives. This site of Caceres was given the ‘world heritage’ status and was supposed to be preserved, but its destruction doesn’t surprise her; she has always held that humans can never keep promises.

Grandma also tells me about the time when spring was followed by a ‘mild’ summer. Yes, you’ve heard it right, summer used to be mild. Grandma says that trees weren’t just beautiful and easy on the eyes, but they were useful too. Saying that they made summers only bearable would be an understatement. Grandma used to have morning tea with grandpa in their garden during the summers too. I had a hard time imagining that!

Listening to my grandma makes me realize what my generation is without. Grandma’s generation was the last to know what it meant to live, if you ask me. No words can describe the hatred I feel for the people responsible for taking all of this away. Why were our ancestors so selfish? They cut down all the trees, spoiled all the rivers, eradicated all forests, reduced the number of animals to almost half and gave us artificial intelligence and money to make up for all this. If only they cared for their actions, we could have seen trees, flowers, rivers and animals. We could have lived in a better world.