The Cold

"an experience of cold"

Karlsruhe - 27-October

Its the start of the winter here. Being from a tropical country, it was in my checklist to experience the winter which is pretty amusing for someone who is born closer to the Equator.

At the terrace of my 12 storey hostel, with my diary, some chocolates, black currant juice and a fresh bloomed intention to spend a night at the terrace, where its closer to the holy emptiness.

But now my intention is oriented more at beating the cold than experiencing it. I was perfectly geared up for the 3'C out there. thermals, jacket, gloves, almost a snow commando, I felt safe in them.

I thanked the someone who had an old relaxing chair left there and I thanked the someone who had the huge solar powered lamp lit up above in full.

the woods and town are all so quite and dark from up there and moreover its almost a place where one might realize this feel of neutrality of belonging to nothing, not to the earth, not to the skies, - provided we neglect the terrace as a infinitesimally thin layer of reality.

an hour passed on such epiphanies,  started writing something in the diary in an unusually huge font (thanks to my fuzzy woolen gloves), but the writing too possessed the divine idea of belonging to nothing, not real, surreal, abstract, or at least legible Malayalam(my mother tongue) script.

It was a late realization that I underestimated the potential of 3'c in the unrelenting, strong wind. my Punjab made woolen gloves were not a match at all. So i was done with writing when my fingertips slipped off the realm of my reality to a numb cold thing. the hood covered up most of my face - but the nose, a nose to me, but a fin heat exchanger to the wind.I breathed short in small intake volumes supposing that would push me to some hibernating state so that in the morning i can wake up like a polar bear. but that didint. though inside the shoes, my foot nails seemed to shrink faster than the live flesh beneath it, where i had a shearing sensation which wasnt very soothing indeed. I waited for the discomfort and my endurance to hit an equilibrium, but time was getting slow, and then slower. The cold has made it up to my knees, elbows and chest. i pictured my friend from the 12th floor trying to wake my body up in the morning as I have told her to, and my nude spirit lying low somewhere behind the scene, head up and yelling " cant you hear me stupid - get me some cloths, its bloody cold like hell ".

so that was cold,

i used to think about the comfort factors for the different ways of death of which death by drowning seemed the worst and dying frozen in a crevasse didnt seem so bad (since it was difficult or expensive to simulate the supposed discomfort). From many things I learned from the cool experience, I would humbly recommend those who planning to end up in some glacier in the Himalayas and getting preserved like a Pharaoh in a cheaper way to consider the plan B as far as you are not a single celled organism, because i remember it from the cryogenics lessons that the cells in artificial insemination kits mostly makes it through.