Sublime summer

Sublime summer

I like to ruminate about the season when it is bidding farewell. Hot summer, my favorite season is almost ending here in our beloved Mumbai. In many respects, summer in India is magnificent, getting a fresh whiff of life; vibrant, alive, earthy, sweet, sublime.

I love sweltering hot, dusty days and cool evenings, simultaneously smelly and aromatic, laden with a promise of mangoes, sarbats, sugarcane juice, chilled beer, gin and tonic, Kulfis, Ice Golas, the excitement of school closing, cricket being played on the beaches and in the overcrowded parks.

I spent my early childhood summers in our sprawling ancestral home of my hometown of Jamnagar. I roamed around lanes of the town aimlessly, enjoying solitude and familiarity of the place where I was born, demanding nothing from it. Gazing at movie posters outside movie halls was the climax of summer excitement.

Sleeping on a terrace is the dominant theme of summers in Gujarat. The elaborate dance of ritual takes place in the evening for this night under stars and moon; the terraces are washed or sprinkled with water, bedding rolled out, earthen pots filled with water, and a radio placed on a parapet for a late-night tryst with music.

Summers in North India are dry and dusty. The beauty of Delhi summers is in noisy but blissful Desert Coolers blowing cool wind in a tightly sealed home.

Kolkata summers are wonderful, the sun rising at half-past four in the morning. Victoria Memorial becomes awash in the early morning sun, lush green maidan comes alive with footballers, and trams clanking. Summer rains, locally called Norwesters, splash city streets to make you feel that life is how it should be.

A common thread running through the Indian summer is an un-describable pleasure of consuming mangos. Mangos are a national passion for Indians in summer, like cricket and movies.

London summers, though quite different from ours, are glorious. The sheer multitude of colors, sights, sounds fill London's otherwise drab existence. Occasional shower in otherwise sunny weather makes travel by London double Decker open deck buses great fun. Sipping a lager in a pub across the tube station is the most satisfying ending of a summer day.

We spent all our summers in Mumbai. We like Bombay summers with all its charm and chaos, heat and humidity, calm ocean, and hyper people.

We walk on Carter road promenade; we walk on Juhu Beach, watch a movie at La Rev, and enjoy Bhelpuri on Pali Hill.

In between, we sit down in a nook of Woodside Inn, Colaba, and consume a pitcher of draught beer with plenty of wafers, Bombay wafers.