Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

A  memory rewind just happened, when a good friend from Hyderabad called the other day. And as it happens with long conversations, the topic turned to the “unbearable, unrelenting summer.”

It had me thinking about summers, summers years ago, which had its own charm for us as kids.

For one, staying indoors was never an option, sun, no sun. The running around houses, the open grounds wasn’t even an activity, it was zeitgeist. Hours would fly away with no care about the harsh sun. Water breaks meant a whole gang of kids landing in any house and if available the cold water from the refrigerator disappearing in no time. Mostly, though, the cold water was sourced from the surai or the matka, the clay pot. Cautions about sunstroke and searing hot winds, called loo in the north, were thrown to the sun.

My favourite  ritual was, what  I term as  ‘saamuhik khaana’ or the community lunch.  My mother would have us siblings and our friends seated in a semicircle around her. And she would make perfect little rounds of curd rice, the soul food of the summer, and place it on to our stretched palms. We all had a small bowl of accompaniment – either sambar, or vatha kozhumbu, a spicy dal-less variety of sambar. The dexterity needed was to punch a small hole using the thumb once the curd rice has been placed on your palm, and pour a small amount of the accompaniment and, without spilling it, transfer into your mouth, much like the pani puri. On occasions it would be a two course meal, sambar rice with some papad and then curd rice. I enjoyed the curd rice the most. One of the advantages of such ‘saamuhik khaana’  was that one was forced to chew his food. For, once you got your share, you had to wait for the round to be completed to get your next share. More the hands, more the time. So if you had gulped it down, you just had to stare and wait.! And of course it also meant that one tended to eat more. 

Summers also had for me  its special aroma. The neighborhood baker. I used to accompany my mother to the bakery, where we would hand over the raw materials – flour, ghee, sugar and stuff and wait while he mixed it all in the proportions needed and put the cookies in the oven. The heavenly aroma, as I waited, has a separate box in my brain. At times the baker would hand over a few sample cookies too. Walking back with a tin or two  full of fresh, hot goodies I would float on cloud aroma. 

 Yet another ‘aromastalgia’ was the local tandoor. Every colony had a tandoor where one would go dough in hand and return with rotis. One handed over the dough, to the women, who would break it into small balls then flatten it with her hand patting and transferring it from one palm to another till it took a nice round shape. The person manning the tandoor would then use makeshift pads and slap  the raw roti across the sweltering inner tandoor wall. Once the rotis are done he would use a tong to take the rotis out. And while you waited you took in all the aroma of the hot rotis as much as you could.

The harsh summer nights bought its own jugad. Air conditioners were a rarity, even desert coolers were still in the up and coming stage. In individual homes, the terrace was the place to crash out at night. The terrace would be cooled down by pouring buckets of water an hour or so before bedtime. And post dinner the whole family headed to the terrace, beddings, bedsheets, water and a  table fan in hand. The beddings were spread and under the starlit sky, yes we did see the stars then, one slept peacefully. The only drawback, especially for us kids, was the sun would be up early and we too had to. Those sleeping indoors kept a bucket of water at the corner of the room to cool it down. Jugads that worked.

These are but just a few to reminisce, for when it comes to summer memories,  I can write a treatise. All now begs the question, “were summers not hot back then” Maybe, but that is relative isn’t it? Or maybe the  kid in us was quite a match for the sun. 

Ensconced in the comfort of the AC, I now feel, riding on the nostalgia of summers ago is the safest thing to do in summer.