by Kalyani Kurup

Created on: September 11, 2008   Last Updated: September 17, 2008

As I stood looking out of my window at the last few autumn leaves, desperately clinging on to the mother tree, refusing to snap the connection, I heard someone saying that the trees look cadaverous in fall. I felt the statement a sacrilege. The trees, if anything, looked majestic and mature. Even the young trees looked like grand old Methuselahs in their nakedness.

The gentle melancholy of autumn is the most perfect manifestation of a season. It is so much more exquisite and magnificent than the springiness of summer or splendor of spring. It is the most bountiful of seasons as well, for in fall nature sends down even the last of its leaves to cushion the earth.

I see my neighbor raking the autumn leaves to put in the trash bag. I almost feel like asking him to give me his share of the dry leaves as well. With all the leaves that have fallen in my courtyard, I find the cushion of leaves not thick enough. I can do with a six inch cushion all over my courtyard to wade through, to drown in the scintillating colors of leaves in different stages of drying and dying.

I drag my table and chairs to the center of that ocean of leaves and do all my reading and writing with feet buried in them. I get the feeling that my chairs and table are floating above the earth. Most of the time the whole family eats there, making every mealtime a picnic to enjoy the fall.

Autumn is best enjoyed by people who live in walkable communities where much of the services that the residents require are available within easily accessible distances and the place is designed to be comfortably used by pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles that can move at chosen speed. Here every quotidian chore includes in it the taking in of the rich colors of fallen leaves and the myriad fauna that use the leaves as camouflage.

In the season of falling leaves, it is sacrilegious to traverse walkable distances in a vehicle. I love walking to my grocery stores through the cushion of leaves that has padded the sidewalks. I like the crunching sound of the leaves through which my feet and every pedestrian's feet try to reach out to the familiar earth, the way a man tries to reach out to the familiar face of his girl through the shy bridal veil. When the heavy shopping bags are brought back home, the bags brush against the leaves in audible whispers.

Inside the cocoon of those leaves, mother earth becomes a delightful mystery. And when they finally remove that thick coat of leaves she looks so young, nascent, defenseless, nude, pink and vulnerable like a newborn. She has lived a full life and is reborn again to grow into fullness again by the next fall.

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