Vasanta: Spring and the Season of Lightening

In the classical ritu framework the year is divided into six seasons rather than four, and Vasanta — roughly mid-February to mid-April across much of India — is the season of thawing. The traditional reading is simple: what the cold months stored, the warming sun now loosens. Heaviness, congestion and sluggish mornings are described as the expected feel of the season rather than as illness.

The household response is a lightening of the kitchen. Winter's ghee-rich sweets, dense dry-fruit preparations and long-cooked meats give way to barley, older grains, honey in place of heavier sweeteners, and a noticeably larger share of bitter and astringent tastes. Neem shoots, methi greens, drumstick flowers, raw turmeric and sahjan appear in many regional kitchens for a few weeks and then vanish for the year.

Routine shifts alongside food. Spring is traditionally the season for earlier waking, more movement, brisk walking and spring cleaning of both cupboards and cooking — and for being wary of long daytime sleep, which classical writing treats as particularly unsuited to this ritu.

Vasanta is also a transition season. The cusp between winter and spring, and again between spring and summer, is where households traditionally change things gradually rather than all at once: sesame oil eases off before coconut oil comes in, and the last of the winter sweets are finished rather than continued into the heat.

A plain modern note: spring in India is also a high pollen and allergy period. Seasonal food habits are cultural everyday practice, not a substitute for care — breathlessness, wheezing, a fever that will not settle or symptoms that worsen need a clinician, not a kitchen adjustment.

The festival layer of this season — Holi's neem and kanji — is covered in Festival Traditions, and the regional versions of spring eating appear in Regional Wisdom.