Cold ... very cold!

Scandinavia, the word and the world had intrigued me ever since my dad had shown it to me in the atlas. It seemed to be a faraway world of its own. Often while glancing through the map, my mind would conjure up images of white, snow-covered landscapes with a white sun trying to show itself. And when finally, it set, the night sky turning into a paranormal green.

But I could never fathom how people in the Nordic region survived in that cold under the throttling weight of their woollens. I have never had a comfortable relationship with the cold. Even during my school days in Delhi, I used to wear two pairs of socks and two scarves apart from the seven layers of clothing which included body warmers, shirts, sweaters and finally a blazer to fight the bitter weather. 

Once during a school exam in winters, I had prepared myself to face the cold so thoroughly that when the exam bell rang, I wasn’t able to bring my hand to the paper to write as it was stuck in the clothing. After a few minutes of tussle, I had to summon all my energy to snap away a few stitches of the blazer seam so that I could bend forward and write.

So, one fine day, I decided to find it out for myself and thus materialized a trip to the Lapland.

Squeezing in all the woollens and mittens we landed in Helsinki, Finland in November. Not bad I thought. I was able to function normally at three to four degrees celsius, which I had exposure to in Delhi. But then it rained and the temperature began to drop. We barely finished our quick tour of the bustling city and a bonus city of Tallinn across the Gulf of Finland and were to rush to catch the train to the airport.

Amidst the confusion of cabs and trams and the incomprehensible Finnish language, we managed to squeeze into the railway station with the train just 3 mins away. Now was the time to break into a run but something was amiss. My legs were not bending. The knees seemed to have locked me down straight and I was limping. 

I called out to my husband who was already near the train waving at me. 'My legs aren't moving. Something is wrong.' 

But the noise of the train shrouded my voice. Worried about missing the flight, he called back, 'Come fast, we can still catch this one.' 

I tried again and again but failed to even walk properly. I gestured my inability with my hands. Sensing something is wrong, he ran back to me. ‘Give me your luggage, you just come’

With just a minute for the train to leave, I was almost in tears, ‘I don’t know what has happened. I am unable to take a single step. The legs are not bending.’ I slumped down, legs straight, certain about missing the train. The cold had caught up with me and the extra layer of body warmer was no match for the Finnish winter. 

Giving up, both of us sat there for a few minutes, watching the train pull back from the station. The next train was after fifteen minutes, just the margin we had saved to get ourselves checked in. He pulled me up straight on my legs and I took a good 5 – 7 minutes to reach the platform. 

Once in the next train, warm and calm, my legs began to move as if nothing had ever happened. But those fifteen minutes of disability shook me like no cold could ever.

It was like a voyage into the heart and mind of someone fighting with a less than normal human ability. Striving to keep pace with the world and not just with oneself. Trying not only to find the answers for him/herself but also answering to the world.