While waiting for a bus, I sniffed something unusual, something new, something pleasant..
Bingo !!! I was standing under a mango tree and it smelt fresh blossoms, indicating the legible knocks of the approaching summer.
Summers of my childhood- ‘1 June to 15 July summer vacation time’, when the kids made sure that the English cursive writing home work was completed by 31st May night, so that we enjoy the uninterrupted 45 holidays, where parents lost the right to ask us to come home early to finish up home work.
The times of longer glistering days and shorter glittery nights.
The afternoons were silent, while parents instructed that the kids don’t play in the summer loo.
After all elders had slept at home, the children would peep out from the windows, and call each other to play in the verandas.
Skipping, marbles, doll marriages, hide and seek and bicycle race were the most favorite events. They were not just games, then!! Winning and losing them mattered much. When we used to think that all those with whom we are playing, will remain with us forever.
One of the afternoons when Dad would ask me to help him bring the shutters of air cooler to the Sector 22 Market, where the man sitting in the children park street used original khas for the shutters, which will fragrant the room for days when the electric pump would shower water on the shutters. And while the man was busy installing khas sheets on the shutters, Dad would slip some coins on my fist to buy ice cream from the vender standing near by. 25 paise for Cola flavor, 50 paise for mango and orange flavor. Chocolate ice cream could be bought only for a whole one rupee. Getting five rupees was a bounty.
In the hot evenings, everybody will gather around the fountain park and enjoy the moist breeze in the dry weather, while children will try to enter the fountain, full of water and play there driving the watchman on duty crazy. It was fun to see the watchman with a stick running after you with a stick. We had not learnt the words like ‘self esteem’ and ‘ego’, then.
At nights, during dinner, when Dad used to declare a curfew when Geetanjali Ayyar used to read the News Bulletin from hand written pages on Doordarshan, Mom would slice ripened up mangoes- Dusshehri, Langda and Safeda (my favourite).
I would pick the biggest and run out in the fountain park. After Mom and other ladies were done with the dinner, they would come out for ‘after dinner walks’. Saunf, meethi supari and jaggery were shared amongst everybody. There were no problems between saas’ and bahus’ and hence no week-days’ serials too.
Mommies would discuss how costly the mangoes were that season (that was a statement for every season) and the best bulk buy deals in fruit market Chandigarh.
The mangoes tasted new every season and yet filled same sweetness in life always.
Ah! the good old days!
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