The Burial of the Dead!

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour."

That is what T. S. Eliot wrote in his poetry, The Waste Land. But is April really the cruellest month? Can one, for that matter, brand any particular month as the cruellest? Cruellest to whom? On what basis? (I'm not trying to put forward an unqualified criticism of Eliot's poetry; what I write here are thoughts that crossed my mind while reading this poem today nce again.)

Back home where I come from, April is a scary month; the annual series of storm and the first thundershowers accompanied by heavy rain always occur in the month of April. Lots of destruction take place during that month. But then, my place belongs to a zone of highly scissmic activity, and so, any month could be the cruellest month!

Do memories need a particular season to be revived? No! Sometimes the simplest events can revive seemingly unconnected memories. Memory is like the pebbles a kid picks up on the sea shore and collects; one never knows what remains in the memory. Sometimes people forget highly significant things, while remembering the most insignificant things. In a sense, memory is both a boon and a curse to human beings!

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Source: http://www.infoplease.com/t/lit/wasteland/burial.html