With most of the flowering trees in and around at their best display, Mysore is awash with colour. All those who have the Seeing Eye cannot fail to see how the summer rains have decked the trees around us with the flowers that they were designed and destined to display year after year.

Long ago while we were at school, we used to be taught that there are four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. This teaching was certainly lingering British legacy although by the time I reached school the British had left our shores and reached theirs long ago.

Although the Indian sub - continent and the vast expanse of most other countries which the British conquered or colonized never had the four seasons as on the tiny bit of soil that was rightfully their own, the British very strangely but true to their tradition of imposing themselves on others, taught their subjects to believe that the world should be seen and governed by what they used to see in Britain.

I do not know what school textbooks have to say about the four seasons now but the mention of spring or any of the four seasons always reminds me of my schooldays. Although I used to memorise the four seasons and rattle them out in class like a pet parrot, I never could accept their presence here let alone in the order they were supposed to co-me in a distant, unseen land.

I used to always wonder why our trees here held on to their green leaves and never resembled the bare - branched ones that we saw on all the Christmas and New Year cards that we collected from the European nuns who received them every year. All the books that I read as a child said that spring, the time when flowers bloomed, came before summer although my own experience was that all the trees here started blooming only after the summer started waning.

Since I was an impatient bundle of inquisitiveness, while in the fourth standard I once very politely asked my class teacher B. T. Neelamma, just as she was collecting her things to go home, why this was so only to be given a resounding whack with the stout cane that was her constant companion and to be told to stop being impertinent. Despite the sharp pain that bothered my bottom and my heart for quite some time I was glad that I had discovered a new word although not the answer to my original question.

I carefully memorized the word and looked up its meaning the very same evening in the dog-eared chambers dictionary that had been used by my grandfather while he was at school, only to discover to my delight that I had not done anything that even remotely resembled the meaning of the word, let alone fitting it accurately. Undeterred by the rather unexpected response from her, I reached school early the next day to question my teacher about its wrong usage, armed with the ageing dictionary but this time having taken care to wear an additional pair of underpants to stem the impact of her cane in case it came again. Thankfully this precaution turned out to be unnecessary as she was now in a more cheerful mood.

Affectionately putting her arm around me, perhaps in a gesture of remorse, without any need for opening the dictionary, she told me that I was right and she was wrong not only in the usage of the word but also in having needlessly caned me in a moment of irritation. That day, although I still did not have the answer to why spring came after summer in Mysore, I made an important discovery; that all teachers are overworked and irritable at the end of the day. I was always a different kind of schoolboy and I am still perhaps a different kind of person as my wife and children often say so.

Although it does not bother me much when my children say that I am very different from the fathers of their friends, it does bother me a little when my wife says I am a very different kind of husband as I can never help wondering how she is able to arrive at this conclusion. Although I have slept over many more important questions in life, I do lose a little sleep over this one every time I think about it. But I console myself by assuming that what she perhaps means is that I am better than most other husbands that she has heard about!

Going back to my slightly different nature, good or bad, while most people would be happy to forget their schools altogether, I used to visit many of my school teachers even after I finished my medical education. I realised that it gave me and them too much solace and happiness. Even now it gives me much joy whenever I bump into my old teachers.

A few years ago while I was at a shopping mall in Bangalore with my family I felt a sharp whack on my bottom that instantly took me back to the springtime of my childhood. I turned back to see who could have the courage to take this liberty with me only to look into the smiling face of my former teacher who was now armed not with her trademark cane but with an umbrella, nevertheless an equally effective weapon of defence and correction!

I introduced her to my rather puzzled family members and reassured her that her then fearsome cane had played a very important role in placing me where I was now placed! I hope she reads this piece as she always tells me whenever we meet that she looks forward to reading what I write.

I dedicate this piece to her and to all my teachers, all of whom have given me something to cherish and treasure. But despite the bits and pieces of wisdom which I have managed to pick up as I have walked along the path of knowledge and education, the answer to the original question of why our spring comes after summer and why our trees do not shed their leaves in winter still eludes me to this day.