It snowed the other day. A long, sustained snow that wrapped the world in a blanket of quiet from which it has yet to emerge. "The longest, largest snowfall in ten years!" the people around me exclaimed. "Wonderful!" they beamed. Then they did some of the strangest things.

A man watered his car (my money says the locks are still frozen). A little boy walked home from school in shorts and a T-shirt, his legs way beyond purple, rather the icky red-white of frostbite. Little girls in pink rubber boots fell smack on their bottoms at each patch of ice. Grown men, suits pants tucked into army fatigue coloured rubber boots, slipped and slided their way to work. Meanwhile, outdoorsmen rumbled past in gigantic SUV's, tires encased in chain (the snow drifts, all three centimeters of them, never stood a chance).

At one point the snow fall was declared an emergency. Students were sent home, as was I. In Kochi, plus four degrees with six centimeters on the ground is a snow day. Yee-ah-hoo!

Children ran outside and used up every inch of snow. They threw it loosely in the air and with outheld tongues chased the flakes in circles that made them dizzy. They formed snow into balls of ice and hurled it at one another. Boys made girls cry and girls made boys bawl. Teachers yelled from open windows, "Put your hood on or you'll catch cold!" Snowmen were erected and destroyed. Trails were blazed and flakes were inspected. "Amazing!" they said.

And it was. I've never experienced snow in a non-snowy land, where people substitute winter boots for rubber boots, window scrapers for water hoses, rice straw brooms for heavy metal shovels. Where 26 degrees is room temperature (warm enough, by the way, to melt chocolate). Where children use the snow when it falls like it may never do so again. I'm glad I saw all those things, if only as a reminder of how wonderful it all really is.