Orange you glad October is here?

If you'd asked my 11-year-old self this question, the answer would have been a resounding YES.
October was filled with so many things. 

As school students, I remember we would have had just finished with our half-yearly exams in September which meant there was no exam stress looming over us.
October meant practices for our annual day play and sports day races. Exchange students would come to our school, giving us a chance to see boys (since we were in an all-girls school).We’d spend free hours in the art room painting diyas, enjoy extra-long practices for Dussehra and Diwali assemblies, and look forward to the week-long Diwali holidays, complete with plenty of sweets. It was the month of perfect weather for lazing on the school grounds during recess, going out for picnics, and more.
Before I knew it, October quickly became one of my favorite months of the year. A month, we all would look forward to. 

As I write this, it's almost the end of October. Diwali will be celebrated at the end of this month. If I look back at this October, I’d say it was fairly 'okayish,' lacking its usual excitement. I was down with cold most of the days, affected with tiredness and fatigue. The changing weather brought along with it, the infamous viral fever which seemed to affect everyone I knew. Plus, there was obviously the ever-increasing pollution problem which got me coughing incessantly and will make Delhi look like an absolute gas chamber as the days go by and as it gets colder (We're already at severe levels).

If you ask my present self if I still like October, I'd have to say 'Absolutely Not'. Sadly, October has been pushed to the bottom of the list. And who's to blame but us? Alas, it's through reasons and faults of our own, that October faces the brunt of it, right? 
Very soon, we'll have the odd-even system in place to fight pollution, smog towers will be installed, firecrackers will be banned (somehow I will still hear them firecrackers), stubble burning will be banned (and yet that will continue), all activities which involve the use of coal and firewood will be banned- but will it be enough?

Looking at October then versus now feels like decades have passed. My remembrance of what October used to be like when I was a kid and the feelings it evoked seem so inconsistent with what I felt this year and the year before. 

And as October ends (by the time you will read this, it will be over), I can only reminisce about the ones I've loved, the best moments they brought. And maybe in the future, through our own actions, we'll have good Octobers again, which hopefully remind me of the ones gone by. 

Image credits- Pinterest