Amitav Ghosh

It happened at the end of winter, in a year when the poppies were strangely slow to shed their petals : for mile after mile, from benare onwards, the ganda seemed to be flowing between twin glaciers, both its banks being blanketed by thick drifts of white- petalled flowers. It was as if the snow of the high Himalayas had descended on the plains to await the arrival of holi and its springtime profusion of colours.