What is it about the summer months that bring on waves of nostalgia that sweep me away? It can’t be the weather- what with global warming and hot flashes combined, summer is the season I dislike and dread more with each passing year.
But there’s something about March, April and May that evokes a wistful longing for days gone by. As I sit, rather swelter; in my flat here; my mind goes back to the summer months in another city. It used to be even hotter but we lived in a house with a terrace and a garden and what a difference that made!
Nostalgia can be so comforting and so…forgiving. It veils the not-so-pleasant times and only rewinds to the happy ones.
Come April and I recall those cool mornings when I would pluck the ‘mogra’ flowers from the bushes growing outside the dining-room window. They bloomed in profusion, sweetly scenting the air. Bringing them indoors and setting them afloat in bowls of water, placed around the house was such a perfect way to begin the day.
Then there was this mango tree which grew in the neighbour’s garden but leant into ours. Every summer, the raw mangoes would drop into our compound and we would keep a look out for them. My maid used to gather them up on her way to the back-door entrance, a fact that irked the owner of the mango tree no end. He was an elderly but sprightly gentleman, and used to come over the low compound wall between our houses, quickly collect the fallen fruit and get back. It was quite a contest between him and our maid to see who would get them first! The maid’s contention was that the mango tree shed most of its leaves in our garden; making a mess for us to clean. Thus, we were entitled to its fruit! The children of course, preferred the sneakier method of going up to the terrace and trying to knock down the mangoes from there with the help of sticks and stones.
Those were the days of using desert coolers to beat the heat and filling them with water was a daily ritual. The ‘khus’ matting would be soaked carefully and once the coolers were switched on, the earthy aroma of the ‘khus’ would waft into the rooms. It would also cause the rooms to become stuffy and humid, not to mention the subdued roar that caused a headache, but hey, this is about the good nostalgia!
Which is why I would rather not dwell on the forty degree-plus temperatures, the suffocating heat made worse by power failures and the inevitable mosquitoes, the depressing trickle of water when the borewell dried up and many other summer woes.
So, maybe this is what nostalgia is all about. Rewind, replay the good times, fast forward the not-good and make both; the past and the present; a better place to live in.
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