I say going out for a post-lunch smoke is becoming a tougher decision to make with each passing day, you say the sun is still fun.

I say the coconut oil in that ugly blue plastic flip-can is starting to become semi-solid even in mornings, you say the monkey cap was always passé.

I say beer is here, you say rum’s still yum.

I say sticks sticking out to scratch your itchy back, you say branches pregnant with possibilities.

That’s how we see the fading winter, you and I.

Now, if those are lousy lines, you can’t blame me. Blame it on the fading winter. Paid news. The Manmohan Singh government’s policy paralysis. The position of stars. The position on the bedside table of that Kama Sutra book that you itch to read each night but are too tired to even pick up. The position of INSAT, OUTSAT or whatever the latest satellite is that is doing the round of this rotund planet. Or whatever.

The Met department says the weather is changing. They will even give you a few rising degrees of truth to prove its point each day. The calendar is in the same gang: February slipping out; March marching in. As is the political class: the muffler is on the way out, as, perhaps, is the muffler man. Kurtas are coming in.

And that, finally, is what it all boils down to. The goodbye versus the doormat – made of jute, with WELCOME writ large in multiple colours in the middle, if you please.

For many, the only season Delhi is tolerable in is the winter. It’s the time when dreamers can sit under the sun (when there is one) and theorise revolution, or draw up sketches of evolution on paper. The heat takes that self-assigned beat off you, making you groan and moan about the realities of the weather, and of friends – of fair-weather variety or otherwise – taking to their wings and flapping away.

This is it, then: goodbye balmy rebellion; welcome sultry election. Or the walk, jog, and finally dash towards it. And along with it a riot of colours, and the taxman. This sure is going to be one taxing summer.

So, whenever you read Eliot (as for me, I don’t; they are all too dense for me, those poets) remember you might be reading it somewhat wrong. April, dear reader, is not the cruellest month. March is.