APRIL

The breeze moves slow with thick perfume
From every mango grove;
From coral tree to parrot bloom
The black bees questing rove,
The koil wakes the early dawn.
WATERFIELD, _Indian Ballads_.

The fifteenth of April marks the beginning of the "official" hot
weather in the United Provinces; but the elements decline to conform
to the rules of man. In the eastern and southern districts hot-weather
conditions are established long before mid-April, while in the
sub-Himalayan belt the temperature remains sufficiently low throughout
the month to permit human beings to derive some physical enjoyment
from existence. In that favoured tract the nights are usually clear
and cool, so that it is very pleasant to sleep outside beneath the
starry canopy of the heavens.

It requires an optimist to say good things of April days, even in the
sub-Himalayan tract. Fierce scorching west winds sweep over the earth,
covering everything with dust. Sometimes the flying sand is so thick
as to obscure the landscape, and often, after the wind has dropped,
the particles remain suspended for days as a dust haze. The dust is a
scourge. It is all-pervading. It enters eyes, ears, nose and mouth. To
escape it is impossible. Closed doors and windows fail to keep it from
entering the bungalow. The only creatures which appear to be
indifferent to it are the fowls of the air. As to the heat, the
non-migratory species positively revel in it. The crows and a few
other birds certainly do gasp and pant when the sun is at its height,
but even they, save for a short siesta at midday, are as active in
April and May as schoolboys set free from a class-room. April is the
month in which the spring crops are harvested. As soon as the _Holi_
festival is over the cultivators issue forth in thousands, armed with
sickles, and begin to reap. They are almost as active as the birds,
but their activity is forced and not spontaneous; like most
Anglo-Indian officials they literally earn their bread by the sweat of
the brow. Thanks to their unceasing labours the countryside becomes
transformed during the month; that which was a sea of smiling
golden-brown wheat and barley becomes a waste of short stubble.

Nature gives some compensation for the heat and the dust in the shape
of mulberries, loquats, lichis and cool luscious papitas and melons
which ripen in March or April. The mango blossom becomes transfigured
into fruit, which, by