It was a pearly-gray morning, and the moisture in the air was gentle, not threatening. The sky was rich with bird-song and Spring-tones.
 
I woke up duly at 7:00 (feeling a little sad about having to wake up so early after a later night than I’d intended), and got ready to keep Warren​’s “Climate Change is Real” vigil – I’d promised him I would keep the flag aloft, so to speak, and I wanted to be good about it.
 
I don’t know how Warren gets ready in half an hour. I could not. Made the coffee, let the dog out, let her back in, dealt with this and that in the kitchen, and was finally out of the house around 7:48 or so.
 
The morning air was still damp, but promised sunshine, and many (but not all) of the bulbs I’d planted in the fall were poking their heads out in the front yard, but they looked still sleepy, as did I.
 
A sense of déjà vu, came over me.  About nine months ago, I was still getting up at 6:15 in the morning, and getting ready for school, which I’d reach between 7:00 and 7:20, depending on the morning. And I’d envy, but not begrudge, my husband and child their sleep (the former began dropping me off at school, since we have but one car, and he needed it, but I’d wake him up just before I needed to leave, to allow him some snooze-time).
 
Nowadays, it’s Warren who gets up early, while I snooze. In any case, after seventeen years of not sleeping, I haven’t learned my lesson still. You’d think I’d have stopped being a night-bird, but alas! That was not to be.
 
So, here I was, climbing up the median hill-strip, to cross Roosevelt Circle, and take up position at what I like to think of as “Warren’s Intersection.”

I was a little nervous, never having done this on my own (the few times I did stand there in the fall of 2015, I’d been with him, so it had felt fine).
 
In any case, I didn’t have to worry. Nothing really happened. Great!

Cars drove by indifferently. I got a thumbs-up from a Bernie supporter, some smiles and waves from some YMCA girls in a YMCA car, a smile from some pretty young women in a sleek car, a couple of unintelligible shouts from young men in a truck, and curious or indifferent looks from others. Nothing much to report, thank goodness!

Drinking my steaming hot coffee in 45 degree weather, I found myself relaxing after a bit.
 
Singing is what we all do at home, so, inspired by Warren’s example, I began to recapture my Hindustani vocal musical self, harking back to the days in the 1990s, when he and I would sing together, and take lessons with our Guruji, Pt. Shreeram G. Devasthali who would teach us in his rich, mellifluous voice for hours on end.
 
I have to say this: I had sorely neglected this side of myself for the past seventeen or more years. Multi-tasking school work, house-work, writing, running a Drama Club, then a Poetry Club and an Environmental Green Team at my school, and bringing up our daughter, nurturing her fully, and home-schooling her when I got home from school – all these things took it out of me, and music suffered. Yes, I sing every night with my family, and used to play guitar and sitar quite a bit up until the time my daughter was a year old but even those took a back-seat as the years went on.
 
Now, music calls me back.
 
I remember our Guruji expressing some regret that I wasn’t practising in the few years before he died. He reminded me to sing, and reiterated that he was very happy that I was a teacher of English (as he had been a teacher of language in India), and that he approved. He was anxious that not just Warren, but I would keep the music he gave us alive.
I tried for a while, but could not keep it going during my school-teaching years.
 
Now, it’s time. I have to keep a promise to our Guruji and to myself.
 
Sohini is a beautiful, but simple raga in the Marwa thaat, full of soaring uttara-ang angst, full of inexpressible longing. I’ve always gravitated to it, even before I sang Hindustani khyal music (when I was a young teenager, I used to love singing the Hindi film song, “Kukoo, kukoo, bole koyaliya,” and later, I played it on my sitar. (I studied sitar in Chennai with Pt. Janardan​ Mitta, who is a disciple of the late great Pt. Ravi Shankar – and yes, I plan to practise my sitar again, now that I’m getting back into music. Thank you for teaching me sitar, dear Guruji – Pt. M. Janardan!).
 
So, I sang Jiya so lagi peeta tori, a beautiful Ektaal composition.  I followed this with Guru charana sharana kara manu jaye, which exhorts the mind to surrender itself at the feet of the Guru (which was so apt and fitting at that moment that I felt tears welling up). After that, I sang Kaise beeti sari raina, piya bina, also in Sohini.  Kaise beeti sari raina piya bina speaks, very aptly, about the lover saying, “How will I pass the night without my beloved? I sit here without rest, counting the stars.”  (Come back safely home, Warren!)  And as I listened to our vocal teacher teaching us, and hearing our voices blend together in this miraculous device, I was grateful for my semi-new i-Phone, in which I’ve stored some of our music-lessons that we recorded back in the nineties, and which Warren transferred to our computers (magic!).  It’s at times like these that I am utterly grateful to technology in general.   I ended with Rum Jhum Barase Meherwa, which is a romantic song about two lovers getting drenched in the rain.
 
This last moisture-steeped song seemed to match the damp morning, but thankfully, there was no rain. It was hard to believe on a morning like this, a perfect March morning, which is getting sunnier by the minute, that Climate Change IS Real, but Real it IS!  Just check your Boston’s weekly weather forecasts going back a month. It’s scary. But I shall not dwell on that for now. Today was my first day out there (since the fall when I went a few times with Warren), and it was the music which dominated.
 
The cars crawled by at our overpass Intersection, and flashed by below on the Highway, and I was self-conscious and awkward at first, but soon found I didn’t care what people thought, or what they might say, or do. It’s extremely liberating, in case you’re thinking you might want to get out there with a sign of your own.
 
I propped up Warren’s sign, “Climate Change is Real,” and felt that I was contributing to the cause in my way. Warren’s idea of being the lone person out there since September of 2015, braving the elements, hammering away at his message is consistent with everything he does – which is with single-minded devotion, including his devotion to us, his family. He left for India last night, and we miss him.

After an hour or more had passed, I wended my way back home, and though I’d slept little, I felt refreshed.  Spring was in the air, and a spring was in my step.  It’s hard to feel gloomy when it’s beautiful outside, and the birds are in full-throated vocal mode.

And I refuse to give up hope. Call me Pollyanna. Yes, there is awful news about the planet every day. Yes, Climate Change is real. I still believe we can do something about it – not change it back to how it was, obviously, but do good work to impede its hurtling route towards disaster, and preserve our beautiful planet, its beautiful music, its beautiful creatures, and its beautiful (but not always so) people.

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