This is the season of Pitru Paksha and Navratri —a cosmic transition where Hindus believe the boundary between the ancestors and the living grows thin. There is a scientific truth buried in the myth: the atmosphere is finally clear of water vapor. The air smells of dry earth and shami leaves. It is the season of perfect visibility. Ask a foreigner about the Indian harvest, and they will say spring. They are wrong. The great Indian harvest— Kharif —comes in autumn. Rice paddies that were flooded during the monsoon are now swaying carpets of amber. Sugarcane stands tall like bamboo forests. Cotton bolls burst open in the fields of Maharashtra and Gujarat, looking like patches of snow on brown earth.
The sky turns into a sheet of unbroken, washed-out blue. The humidity vanishes, pulled away like a magician's cloth. Suddenly, you can see the horizon. In Delhi, you spot the Aravalli hills where there were none. In Mumbai, the Arabian Sea turns from muddy grey to a deep sapphire. autumn season india
Then comes autumn.