So I get out of the hostel in the searing heat, muttering to myself about how much I hate the summer. I step out of the gates and a gust of dust laden hot wind assaults my skin in agreement. Just when I am about to launch into a dreary monologue in my head, cursing everything under the sun, I am aware of an exquisite scent that the heat wave left behind; almost like an aftertaste. It stayed with me for about ten steps but suddenly I didn’t loathe the summer anymore. I cannot, for the life of me, tell you what scent it was; but the dreary monologue that was cued to play was replaced by a montage of sepia tinted memories of summers long past.
It was a heady blend of summer holidays I actually had and the kind of summer holidays you read about in Ruskin Bond and R.K. Narayan stories. Towers of Famous Fives, Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Sidney Sheldons that I loved to hide behind. A pile of Tinkles that I would flip through or a sturdy encyclopedia opened to the section about the underwater world or the Milky Way galaxy. The various craft projects that I would take up with ridiculous amounts of enthusiasm, bring out the paints and glue and glitter..ohh the whole nine yards…and then abandon them by the end of the day. I remember this one time that I decided to sketch birds and was delighted when at the end of the holidays I had pages filled with pretty birds that looked as good as my brother’s (his sketches are awesome!!) handiwork; even if I say so myself.
Mangoes, the smell of mangoes would be everywhere. Ripe mangoes at noon, slices of tangy green mangoes in the dal (lentil soup), langda aam (I know not why they are called lame mangoes) that we would roll between our palms till it turned all pulpy inside and then tear off a bit of the skin at the top and sip at it. No tetrapack fruit juice bullshit. I always fantasized about having a mango tree at my granny’s place where all the cousins could clamber up and down the branches, make up elaborate games and occassionally fall and scrape a knee. But alas, none of my grannies had a mango tree. I recall one summer when I thought of penning down my own mystery story which I thought turned out okay. That was then…now it reads plain funny. But I miss the fact that back then there were no worries about it not being good enough. 14 year old me was confident enough to write down a coherent story start to finish while 22 year old me is still stuck on the first chapter of a story she started when she was 21!
The summers since then have become more complicated. From the time I was in 10th standard, summers were appropriated for extra classes and for internships during college years. The sheer joy lazing around reading books, eating mangoes and getting my hands messy with glue and paint are sadly over. And all that’s left is work and a million worries. But sometimes, nostalgia interrupts and makes you smile in the middle of a hot and dusty road.
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