Summer works a long day and a short night. It is liquid tar on a toffee-brown road, yoghurt-packs on a nasty sunburn, beads of sweat on the temples and a short-tempered, damp elbow on the car horn.At dawn, fingers of sunlight touch the sleeper's eyelids. The sun paints the clouds pale gray and pink. Out at sea, a sailing boat rides at anchor and suddenly the sun bursts into day. In the parks, schoolchildren tug at flaming shoe-flowers, blinking in the blinding sunlight. And at home the electricity gently nudges the office-goer awake by going off for four hours.Summer is sun-streaked hair, a filmy muslin dress, a child reading Enid Blytons sitting on the window sill. It's a mosquito on the wrong side of the door, the whir and creak of a fan and Dad's eyes glued to the TV set for a Wimbledon match.Summer is a loose knot of the tie hanging halfway down the chest, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows and diamonds of perspiration doing a tango down your back. It is also the 5 pm horde of commuters packed in a Redline bus like sardines in a tin.It is a cut toe. It is scorching winds that blow day and night. It is parched land cracking up beneath your feet. It is dry gardens and cool orchards. It is a cow under a neem tree and a classroom locked for the summer hols.Summer is huge semicircles of cool watermelon, its water running off your elbows. It is globes of polished mangoes arranged in great pyramids in the bazaars. It is cartmen reeling off exotic names in one breath - chausa, langda, gulabjamun, Dasheri, totapari, safeda, tapka. It is a Ratnagiri Alphonso nowhere in sight and a grinning shopkeeper saying, "Only for export nowadays, saar." It is the quick slicing of Maliabadi mangoes and children's eyes round with greed.It is the cuckoo or the koel hiding amidst the jamun foliage, sleepathons in the afternoons and neighbourhood children pelting stones at green mangoes. It is the musty odour of the melons and papayas; the heady smell of apricot jam, the tinkle of ice in tall glasses of mint-flavoured `panna', and the crimson skin of Dehradoon litchies.Summer is summer hols. Bottles of cold drinks rolling all over the house and comic books strewn carelessly about. It is family excursions to overcrowded run-of-the-mill places - Dehradoon, Mussoorie, Nainital, Simla and coming back even more tired. It is sleeping on crisp linen sheets in pearly moonlight. It is long afternoons of playing Scrabble in a dusty house.It is dry taps and frayed tempers. It is blazing red, purple, orange bougainvilleas, the tang of Grandma's mint chutney, and Rover's tongue rolling out because of the heat. It is cool cucumber salads, mango pickle salted away in the cellar, crisp zari-edged chanderi saris and children getting on their mothers' nerves.Summer is a family at an ice cream parlour, a child bawling for all 21 flavours, a harassed father licking at his swiftly melting ice cream cone and a bewildered pre-adolescent ordering cheeku-flavoured ice-cream shake.Summer is a lavender, mustard and dusty grape sky. It is wispy clouds gathering slowly and converting into a threatening, thunderous black sheet. It is a curled dark fist in the sky, bolts of electric blue lightning, a bowling alley of thunder. It is the wonderful musty smell of the parched land as the first drops of rain mingle with the earth. It is children dancing on the streets and commuters caught unawares. It is gaily printed umbrellas and excited barking dogs. It is the smell of freshly fried pakoras and crowds of government employees at nearby tea stalls.The doors are shut and coffee brews on the stove. The AIR comperes are already playing evergreen Barsaat numbers. People are pressed against their windows, looking at the overcast sky. It is time to bid summer goodbye.
