They say spring is the time and symbol of nature’s rebirth. Of course, it is the season when nature stops weeping for gladness, clouds move, fir¬mament gets clear, brightness radiates, flowers in gar¬den blush with ease, pigeons coo and sparrows twit¬ter in joy as they nest for their new nestlings. All this labour of love, and an exhilarating and invigorative ambience around makes the arrival of spring con¬spicuous. And that’s perhaps why a lot has been said and written about Aamad-i-Bahaar (arrival of spring).
The other day while relishing the melodies of ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh, I was surprised when he sang ruefully –
Ab kay kis rang main aayi hai Bahaar,
Zard he zard hai,
Paydoon pae hara kuch bhi nahi

I took a quick dekko through the window glass pane and unexpectedly found delightful green¬ery outside. The small new leaflets on the boughs were giving the spectacle as if of a new life with new beginnings, new strivings and new endings. Who says it’s pale and how can it ever be so—I asked myself and simultaneously felt pity for the lyricist who, I presume, had been bogged down deeply by melancholy, to the extent of impairing his sight. It is indeed ironical! The same ‘irony’ revives when our golden-voiced Vijay Malla sings tunefully—
Asi chhu dil-e-gulzaar dodmut,
Shalmaarus keh karav,
Yus ne shahlat pawe jigrus,
tath bahaarus keh karav.

 Now this is too much! Again it is the over-drawn sting of nuisance bug called Melancholy, which overshad¬ows the verdant charm of spring season. Otherwise the human heart is virtually never set on fire and so never ever extinguished! A small pound of pulsat¬ing mortal flesh just what it is, unaware of large-sized platitudes and clichés attributed to it unjustifiably. 
The fact is that unless a person lives with nature and transcends time, he cannot feel any change around him, he cannot take any interest in the chang¬ing seasons. For him, every season is a season of agony, a season of pain. He laments over the past ad nauseum and heedless of the bounties that surround him, destroys his present foolishly. He looks for hap¬piness in strangers’ gardens while it grows unnoticed at his own fireside.
Spring season has nothing so special, nothing so exotic except its discernible arrival. Other sea¬sons too come and then go. They too bring a ring of change in their own way. And they too have an in¬tensity to capture our attention and make our lives appear as sweet as the murmur of the brook. If spring season is a feel-good season, then all sea¬sons are spring seasons. As Faiz puts it—
Nahi hai koi bhi mausam,
bahaar ka mausam
And it is just a matter of feeling. Just a one single feeling—a feel¬ing of gladly accepting oneself as one is at present, without the add-on of dead yesterdays and unborn tomorrows.
What the Nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu, said about spring season is something grandly re¬markable and contemplative. She wrote- “Spring time has no date. It does not confine itself to the flowering of trees and singing of birds, it depends upon the attitude to life and the approach to life”.
Yes, it is an undisputed reality that a sense of well-being and a sense of happiness is, in fact, a state of mind. A seemingly sickening view of sur¬roundings can become charming, and with routine indifference chirpy birds and spring flowers could look unattractive. It all depends upon ap¬proach towards life. But all of us, unfortunately, dream of some magical and extra-ordinary rose-garden beyond our reach, instead of enjoying the narcissus and hyacinth that are blooming out¬side our windows today. How strange that we don’t relish this little possession of life. How tragic fools we are!
Even up the creek, there is no go-off with life but a reason to live, a reason to fight back boldly, a reason to frustrate the cheap designs of our rivals, a reason to see ourselves on right path, and all this with a reason to spend and fill fleeting moments of life with scintillation and symphony as of the spring air; to remain afloat on the cloud nine always, craving and aiming for lots of ameliorative greening, both in our lives and in our surroundings.
All we have to do is feel life around us. And when it is spring time, you don’t have to feel it. It comes to you itself with a new spark of life. As Allama Iqbal said it so many decades ago—

Phir baad-i-bahaar aaye,
Iqbal ghazal khwan ho
Ghuncha hai agar gul ho,
Gul hai tow gulistan ho

   (The author teaches at Media Education Research Centre, MERC, Kashmir University.)

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