Summer nostalgia

Everything that announces the onset of summer is here. There are watermelon mounds arranged everywhere in the market, the Gulmohar has started blooming its red blossoms prominently, the plants on my mother's garden sill have started flowering with a rage of colours and birds are making their nests on our Air conditioning unit. The hot, sticky summer nights are here and I have been gorging on ice creams almost daily. My mother has stacked our refrigerator with different flavours of home-made cold syrups. Hot nights are making people go for long walks post dinner in my town which is nice since this way everyone gets to meet each other. The mornings are still a bit cooler than the daytime but the poor ducklings in the lake prefer to stay in water and have stopped moving around the jogging track around the lake. I miss their familiar greetings on my morning jogs by the lakeside.

Summer brings nostalgia too, esp, visiting my grandparents home during school holidays. Now that I have grown up and grandpa is no more, my grandmother waits for us eagerly during May. All of us cousins, aunts, uncles and her brothers and sisters get together for mango feasts and luncheons. It is an absolute riot then. Everyone is working around the house and talking, laughing, kids are running amidst the chaos, the kitchen bustles with a constant activity for the luncheon. We sit together for ice cream parties and long walks at night. Summer is the quintessential relaxing season to say. By the third week of May, my grandmother starts preparing the plants and trees in her orchard for the rains. And it has never happened that we haven't danced in the first rains with all of our aunts and cousins together. Summer is also special because two of my uncles posted in the Army on the border fronts come home for a month long vacation. They bring stories with them and lots of laughter and the house feels alive with their presence.

I remember when my grandpa added an additional floor to the existing house. It was summer and all us cousins enthusiastically helped in watering the concrete walls, deciding colours and finalising tile designs, meddling with the workers until our grandpa shooed us away. It was an exciting time to be a child then. One day after most of the built work was finished, he made us stand near one of the open terraces and clicked our picture. The whitewash stains are visible in the picture and we were being naughty about having to pose there.

During family gatherings for luncheons, all the boys would hang out amongst themselves and would exclude us girls from every cricket and softball matches they played. The uncles would sit outside in shade and talk their grown up subjects. My aunts and grandma would be busy in the kitchen and us girls would sometimes forcibly enter and see what they were cooking. 

Grandpa organized everything. He was a communication channel between grandma's instructions for supervising the arrangements.

Oh, the nostalgic nineties! 

After my grandpa passed away suddenly about a decade ago, my grandma planted these flowering fragrant plants in honour of his memory. She said, she could feel him touching the plants and enjoying the fragrance. He was a very enthusiastic and doting father and grandpa.

Madhu Malati creeper

The Madhu Malati creeper reaches till the terrace and the pomegranate plant now a grown tree bears little red flowers that all of us loved to look at to see if any fruits were formed. 

Jasmine creeper going till the terrace

Pomegranate flowers

Roses

Now, 

there are jasmine and roses blossoming every summer. At night, the sweet sickly delicate fragrance of jasmine fills the house. 

Me and my cousins would pluck the jasmine flowers early in the morning and weave them in small hair braids onto our aunts and mothers.

My earliest childhood memories are reading books under one of the tall Lemon trees in my grandmother's orchard when all my other cousins would be napping in the afternoons. We would all squeeze together forcibly on my granny's poster bed demanding for goodnight stories from her. She would tell us one long story with too many characters and that would turn us into sleepyheads from where our mothers would take us to sleep in the big common room joining all other rooms. On some nights, we insisted on sleeping on the terrace under the starry skies and we were allowed under the condition of arranging the bedspread ourselves. Those of us who overslept the next morning until the sun started pricking by 6:30 am, would have to gather and put away the bedspread on the first floor store rooms. I remember making a quick dash for brushing teeth as soon as I opened my eyes to avoid carrying the bedspread downstairs. Of course, our younger cousins never did it themselves so it eventually was our duty to clean everything. We would sing songs and dance on the terrace during the evenings when it became a little cooler. We spent many a fine afternoons trying to pluck almonds from the tree adjoining the neighbour's house. Many branches of the almond tree came till the terrace and we would be armed with long sticks to keep hitting the branches and leaves. Some of us would stand guard downstairs and collect the prized almonds. Such beautiful and vivid memories from a bygone era.

All my memories of this house are centred around my grandparents, their evergreen and blossoming orchard with lemon, almond, guava, papaya trees and our laughter echoing throughout the place. Nothing lasts forever, certainly not the glorious childhood that we enjoy with priceless memories in our little hearts. The house still stands and so does the orchard, but my loving grandpa is no longer there to water the hot ground letting the sweet earthy aroma rise up during summer evenings. All we have left are his memories and smiles and the trees he so lovingly planted for his grandchildren.