Hazy, crazy days of summer

What is your favorite season of year? Why?

I remember standing on the terrace, guarding the blue plastic sheet with the tiny Vadams left to dry in the sun. It must’ve been around 3:45 pm, the sun was hot, but its intensity was dying down. A faint wind picked up. It was towards the end of May, probably a couple of weeks before school started. April and May in my hometown were scorchers and we always had our summer vacations at this time. Usually, Mum never made Vadams, but that year, she decided to make them and put them in the sun to dehydrate.

Vadams are savory Indian fritters that are usually deep-fried in oil and served on the side during meals. They are prepared by grinding the ingredients to a paste and then sun-drying them, to dehydrate them completely so they can be preserved. The fritter paste is made of coarse or fine ground grains mixed with salt and spices, delicious to eat when they are semi-dried for humans and birds. You dehydrate or sun-dry the paste to preserve it for a longer duration or until you require deep fry it. Sitting in the sun, guarding the fritters as they dry is the most boring activity there is. But, even this task is infinitely better than taking a nap. At least to a pre-teen adolescent. So, there I was, sitting on the terrace, occasionally walking up and down keeping guard over Mum’s most valuable preparation- the Vadams.

That year, the top Hindi songs blasting through the radio were from the movies Heena, Lamhe, and Saajan. I remember playing the radio at high volume and sitting above the window on the terrace to listen to the songs while I performed my duty. I had taken a dupatta or stole with me to cover my head. The slight wind was blowing the garment around and it refused to cover my head properly. I slid the cement cover to the water tank aside, dipped the cloth in water, and used it, perfect! I could feel the sizzle of my head under that wet cloth, but I did not remove it. I had sat for what felt like hours but was only 45 minutes. So I asked Mum. Now, I could not go down, she wasn’t sitting down waiting for my queries, so I had to shout the query and she would respond. “Ma! How much longer have I to sit on top?” Mum never responded to my query the first time, she would wait until I asked her the same question a few more times before she responded. So I had to be patient. The steps for me to head down were that the Vadams were fully dry; or it started to rain. If they were fully dry, then Mum would come and check it again, and only after she confirmed I could go down. I could not go down to inquire because the birds would come if I left the sheet unguarded. Oh, the quandary! And then I screamed again.

Two things happened. I heard Mum walking towards the backdoor and then I smelt the rain. Big fat drops. On the hot terrace. Petrichor! I turned around and ran to the sheets and dragged them one on top of the other, like a sandwich, then folded them up from the corners so I could drag it all to the terrace opening. We lived on the second floor, so I was sitting on the third floor. The terrace only had an 8-inch parapet. We had no stairs to access the terrace and there was just a hole in one corner of our roof, above the washing stone. We had placed a ladder on this washing stone that extended above the hole in the roof, and that was what we used to climb to the terrace. I had the plastic in my hand and when I saw Mum below, I pushed the plastic sheets to her, so she could take it indoors. It took a little bit of effort, but I managed to get it through the hole without spilling any of the dried fritters on the ground. And as if on cue, the clouds burst on top of my head, I scrambled down the ladder, but I was wet. Oh, the joy of being caught in a cloud burst after an afternoon baking in the sun!! I’ve never felt more refreshed or more rejuvenated.

Summer never started on March 1st, the transition was always gradual and slow. We would spend the first fortnight in revisions and preparations for the examinations. Frequent power cuts would remind us that the temperature was inching up and that we should have studied during the day. Then when the examinations started, it always seemed like the sun was sitting above us, cooking our heads and making us forget the lessons we had revised for the examinations. By the end of March, we were eager to stop school and the drama of examinations. April always seemed to start dewy, but as the start of the vacation, the first couple of weeks were filled with non-stop playing and cooking in the sun. The power cuts only increased our playtime, so there were very few complaints about the longer durations. And it marked the end of one academic year and a break from the boring and the mundane. Clothes dried up faster. The days were longer. We got to spend more time playing. Fruits were juicier. Rasna, Ice creams, Ice lollies, Ice Golas, you name the ice-based snack and this was the only season they could be enjoyed and refrigerators were stocked! Vacations were just so much more fun than regular school days. But, the highlight of summer, was the summer showers. The regular summer showers were a welcome break but there were the occasional hail storms that made our vacations so much more memorable. I’ve always remembered summer showers as being short and the monsoons as being interminable. And the fun part of short, sporadic cloud bursts, was how they dropped the temperature down. It never rained longer than a couple of hours in summer and if you were lucky, you’d get hail! This was always a welcome break from the excessive heat, but this was the only way I enjoyed the rain.

Schools reopened in June just as the monsoons kicked in. I don’t enjoy the monsoon rain as much as the summer showers because the monsoons seem endless, unnecessary, and a waste. Everything is drowned in the downpour. The monsoons were the only season I got into trouble at school. I always had designs on my uniforms from the mudguards or lack of them on the bikes. Wet uniforms. Cold classrooms. Doctors. Medicines. And the worst punishments. Canceled PE classes and less play time because it rained in the evenings. Damp clothes. Musty odors stuck on everything. Week two of the monsoons always had me start praying in earnest for the sun to come out and shine again.

I miss those hazy, crazy days of summer. Dry hot summer, wet icky sticky humid summer. If the sun is out, it’s my season. I don’t mind the rain, I just don’t enjoy getting wet as much as I do basking in the sun. And that day, sitting on the terrace, enjoying that lazy wind slowly blowing hot air everywhere, was a perfect day for me. I had spent the afternoon listening to some nice Hindi songs, sitting silently on the terrace, lost in my thoughts. My hometown is landlocked, so the air even during summer, is hot, dry, and crisp, unlike the coastal cities where the higher humidity makes summers hot and wet. March, April, and May were the best examples for elucidating the degrees of comparison- hot, hotter, hottest experienced through the thermostats inching slowly upwards.