Summer Murmur

Summer is healing! It’s warm and at times scorching,

almost like an unlimited, free, over-active sauna.

Completely unassuming and honest,

it comes like a brazen truth; ready to scald the unprepared.

 

We got our first desert cooler when I was 3.

My sister was born in June and needed to be kept cool..

For years after, I remember fighting for that front spot,

fighting to sleep under water drizzles.

It was the best time of the day.

We’d stand in front of the cooler with our eyes closed 

mouth open and feel like what one feels in a water park today.

Just that it didn’t last too long, thanks to the numerous power cuts,

and the absence of inverters! (We obviously couldn’t afford a generator then)

But I loved those times and to death I’d love them

Every time summer comes today, it murmurs those memories.

 

During each vacation, we’d come back to our village to live with our grand-parents.

And villages in those days had electricity coming in for blinks and then for hours it’d be gone.

Thankfully we slept under the bare sky and the stars were mesmerising enough to make us forget the electricity absence.

But when it came, it was havoc, we were 12 cousins fighting for one small table fan.

The poor fan could only go to and fro from 0 to 60 degrees. 

So we had our days set: Mondays the eldest 4 would sleep in the coveted beds, Tuesdays the next 4 and so on.

And on some lucky days it rained.

The older folks knew they’d never had a chance, thankfully they weren’t even used to the ‘luxuries’!!

The Sun shone brightly, almost rudely right into our eyes and the late risers were up by maximum 6!

And then started the breakfast marathon with teas and parathas and buttermilk and butter.

There’d be mangoes kept in buckets.. of course there was no refrigerators in our village. Even if there had been, they’d be re-christened almirahs 😀

We’d go to the fields in the noon where there was a tube well under a tree.

The tube well pumped out ground water for watering the fields and this water was chilled,

almost as if from the refrigerator!  And it came with high pressure from a pipe with a 6” diameter.

And constantly kept filling a 4’ X 10’ deep concrete pit. 

We could be found there all afternoon taking chances to plunge, came out shivering and stood back in the queue, caring the least about tanning or taking a break to eat or to even breathe! It was heaven.

It was way better than the water-parks today.

We’d go back home by 3-4. There’d be many litres of nimbu paani or on some lucky days roohafza ready for us kids.

And on almost every alternate days our grand-dad got us a bunch of fresh sugarcanes right from the fields.

Summers used to be fun!

 

And then I went to a boarding school. It was a sports school and I was just in 4th standard.

My brave parents sent me anyway. I’ll leave out mentioning the first 2 years when I struggled living there.

I haggled my dad every time he visited. I pleaded, cried, so wanted him to take me back home.

And then I arrived!! I started to enjoy the struggles..

The struggles in finding a loo, a bathroom, 

the best almirah, the best bed, 

the best friend, the best place in the dance recital, 

the best set of recycled books from the school store.

The struggles of waking up at 5 in the morning, going for a 2 hours session of sports in the fields, 

running like dogs and yet being last in races.

Changing sports from one to another so I’d have to run less or practise less, or swim less.

Struggles of still practising and performing your best, or cheering your team for the inter-house competitions. 

We were more fierce than any India Pakistan cricket match.

Slogging through the day drenched in sweat and when we got back to the hostel, the lights would go out.

The time we learnt how to use a mosquito net or that old yellow sticky ‘odomos’.

We would wait to fall ill.. because the infirmary had a generator.

What was tanning or sunburning or mosquito bites or sweat??

These were the best days of my life and I’d live them again in a heartbeat!

And during those years of growing up there were some crushes and some drools,

and stolen glances and that special feeling that you can only feel as teens.

There was a love story or many that blossomed in each heart!

Aaah.. did we feel any heat?? 

No way, those years all that we felt were cool beachy breezes that blew in our faces,

rains that just drenched just a few of us chosen ones. (At least that’s how it felt)

 

And why is it that we fear heat so much today?

I guess if we recall some of our childhood memories, we can feel the breeze.

Why fear the most crucial feature that leads to life? Why fear summer?

And if it still doesn’t help, Let’s meet in Goa 😀