Summers

Summers. I can feel the summer. Summer means our trunk box would come down from the attic. The trunk was filled with our comics. At the start of the school it went up the attic. At the start of vacation it came down. Those books, read and re-read every vacation - we knew every story in it. Yet we never tired. The new books added during the year would go into it as well. That was our summer trunk. Long relieved of its duties of carrying luggage during travel, it was now our magic box. 

This trunk, incidentally travelled with my father when he made his epic journey from Kerala to Mumbai to find a job. It travelled with us until moulded plastic displaced these metal trunks. 

Back to summer. Summer meant the fragrance of the Nandiyarvattai/Parijat in the building we lived in. It meant going to pluck flowers early in the morning. Hibiscus, Nandiyarvattam, Parijat - pluck and offer them to god. It meant playing all day.

Summer meant cycling. Every day. Morning. Or Evening. On the so called lonely road.

Summer meant round robin badminton - played on windy mornings or evenings. Full of customised rules. If the shuttle got stuck on a sunshade - the one who hit had to get it - or you were out. And we, the expert pipe climbers, always waited to get the shuttle down. 

Summer also meant, duties at home. Pickling duties. Shake that bucket. It meant karuvadam duties. Go spread on the terrace. Drive away the crows. It meant the lingering smell of pickles under the bed. It meant the smell of vadam being cooked. Mangoes being cut - raw for the pickles and ripe for eating.

When we went to Kerala, the summer flavour was different. It was about waking up to kukku-kukku. It was mellifluous Malayalam all around. It was the smell of markets. It was the smell of jute bags in shops. It was going around in buses. It was the mangoes we found lying in the courtyard - an acre of it. It was jackfruit - jackfruit chips, jackfruit pappadam, jackfruit jam, jackfruit payasam - there was jackfruit in everything. 

Summer meant the clouds playing with the Sun in May. It meant unending heat and humidity and unending hours of play. Summer also meant drinking tons of water. Summer meant cousins and meeting them (the only time in the year we got to meet them - our Kerala cousins) and playing with them and bullying them and getting bullied. 

Summer meant heat and dust and sweat and heat rashes. Summer meant cold water baths by the well. Summer meant long walks to the river (3 kms) and a long leisurely bath followed by a visit to a temple. Summer sometimes meant a shorter walk to nearby temple and have a bath in the temple kolam - I remember one summer each day we bathed only this pond. 

It was sitting on the porch and waiting for someone. It was sitting on the porch. It meant pre-monsoon rains - the kind you can only see in Kerala. It meant fireflies. It means many other bugs. It meant Julie - the abandoned dog who we had adopted. 

Nowadays though - summer is a bit boring. Summer is classes and camps. Kids still play like mad. There is still a lot of unstructured play.

But there is no native place. At least we dont have one. Not since grandfather sold the ancestral property for a pittance. It is all in our memories. And photographs. Thats all there is to it now.