White Summer

Watching all the 'bring-on-the-merriment' Hollywood movies around Christmas, I always wondered what the big deal was about a ‘White Christmas’! Even the actors spreading the spirit looked runny-nosed and red-cheeked from the blistering cold! Why then did these people not just look forward to, but hope for, this extreme weather!? Back then, I figured it was one of those things you had to be there to enjoy. And then, luckily I did get the opportunity to be in NY for a Christmas, and it did turn out to be a White Christmas! It looked beautiful! A giant sheet of clean white sequined with red and green, the lights giving it all just the right sparkle… it was a sight alright! But somehow, I could sense, for the locals it was not just the beautiful backdrop that held the allure of a ‘White Christmas’…

I returned to the homeland and the mystery remained unsolved and forgotten in a corner of the mind. What also returned with me was a yearning, a longing to enjoy some more of what I was leaving.

And then- came Summer; and with summer, came so much more- a mixed bag of discomfort and happy memories. The Indian sun is harsh and bright; it bears down in an unrelenting white beam and the landscape becomes a haze of heat! But for those of us who’ve bobbed on these heat waves all our lives- it also brings the softness of balmy evenings, the coolness of a shady glen in one corner of the courtyard- where all the neighbourhood children would gather for the game of the season (it varied you see- some years it was carom, and for some it was cards :P)! Afternoons full of a gaggle of aunts drying out the year’s supplies, and uncles messing with the ice-cream pot. Afternoons full of banter and bickering, Kulfi and Khus, and lazy long hours that are the gift of summer. Summer- made fragrant by the mangoes and the jasmine, coloured in the vibrant shades of a sunset in May!

It’s funny how some bonds are based on discomfort! What the pleasant winter months couldn’t do, the harsh beauty of summer had done- awoken the spark of identity. Yes, it is oppressive and at least once each day we ask- “when’s this getting over?!” and yet- it belongs. It is the unique weather of our land that cannot be replicated anywhere- same as our unique ways of dealing with it, and the many, unreplicable memories born of it!

The heat, the sweat, the dust… the incessantly cooing cuckoo, the Gulmohur, the pickles! They all go hand in hand; they’re all part of the same picture. And that picture is mine. Its hot strokes are mine, as are its cool light breezes; and the plethora of images it weaves are mine. This is the picture of the ‘White Summer’- and it is special because it is mine.