Summers were love

That overpowering sense of having lost something you had forgotten you once loved, taking you afar, into the whirl of days when the green of the grass was the only green you knew, the wisps of fresh air breathed life into your knotted hair and the golden sky promised it would never leave your side.

Small places where everyone knew just about everyone, where the beggars on the street always looked familiar, the vegetable seller worried if you didn’t show up one day, the old lady smiled at the kids who stole mangoes from her trees and where the nights quietly washed away the hot evenings.

I remember walking down those small criss-cross streets, my father two steps ahead, for his work wouldn’t allow him to keep up with my slow, stumbling pace. The Marutis lined the streets, but the people on foot always seemed to outnumber them.

Summers meant sipping on lemonade and slurping on ice cubes. And playing in the afternoon sun when the entire house would be sleeping, because the thrill of breaking some rules and proudly acquiring cool, sometimes sun-burnt, tanned limbs, was a temptation you couldn’t resist. With hair that didn’t give a damn, some bright yellow clothes that always seemed to fit a tad too loose, arms flailing about and legs turned a dusty brown, each broken window of the house just stood there, a remnant of your affair with summer, each summer.

And everyday, the city splashed an array of pictures that left you in awe, hues and patterns borne out by a kaleidoscope, a pretty little kaleidoscope, which has now turned old and jittery but keeps churning out marvels all the same.

Of course, until the day it gives way and breaks into tiny but empty versions of itself.