How's the weather ?

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Two years back around this time of year I was working from India and in morning around 9am I came to office. As usual first thing I did was to login to all my mails, one European friend messaged me asking what was the temperature at my place that time? I was surprised by this question and I could not reply as I didn’t know the temperature. We don’t have thermometers as visible as it is in Europe. No thermometers in apartments either, but yeah there was one in the lift which I used to come to my office, but I hardly ever looked at the reading there. I used to find it strange, why would someone ask about temperature or weather unless some extreme? I used to read in books that in England people even start their conversation with “ The weather is good today” or “The weather is lousy today” or “ How is the weather today “. Most of the small talks were also about weather as it about baseball in America.

Now everyday I go to office, see my colleagues, exchange greetings and first thing “Oh the weather is this…….” Such a change in myself. Yeah, something which I found to strange earlier ceases to be 'not normal' now. I still don’t know the meteorological’s department website of my city in India but the Finnish Meteorological department’s website is open on my computer 24 hours.

You stay in Finland for one year and you will get to know how important weather is and how much it affects your daily life. The perfect summer evening will make you cheerful as if you just returned from journey to Moon and the month of November will make you feel like even your parents have dumped you.

Let’s talk about the November weather. When I go to work it is dark and when I walk back to my apartment it is dark as well. All hours of day are soggy and grey and if you are not alert you will be sucked into the black hole of depression. You will rarely find anyone cheerful around this time; the depressing weather is really infectious. You will have to find the reason as to why you are feeling so low, down and depressed. It will be a crusade everyday to shake off the duvet in morning and drag yourself to work. God help if you get some bad days around this time of year, it will be suicidal (Yeah, now you know why Finnish suicide rate is one of the highest in world) It will continue till first ‘snow fall’, the harbinger of better times. This time when there was snowfall in the last week of October I was happy that atleast I will be saved the trauma of black November but alas! It was just snow storm and now there is no any snow, only depressing darkness.
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While writing this post I suddenly remembered my dislike for thermometers. It so happened that in my junior school days there was a thermometer hung in the wall of the one of the corridor and the end of corridor was Principal’s office.
I used to have the privilege of seeing that thermometer only when I was summoned to Principal office. So seeing the thermometer became synonymous with seeing the father Principal (in white robe with no beads but stick :d) and this has gone in my subconscious.