May yellow

As May unleashes its fury and the mercury climbs up to a dizzying 46 degree Celsius, the heat and the long wait for the monsoons are all one talks about these days. I, in the meanwhile, am fixated with the colour yellow - it's like everywhere, the quite obvious representative being the malevolent and monstrous ball of fire hanging in the afternoon sky. Though not my most favorite color from the mood-lifting spectrum, I tend to associate yellow with the childhood summer vacations - may be it's something to do with the ubiquitous presence of mangoes and the unrestricted freedom from the shackles of schoolwork. So as the sun continues showering its flames of vengeance, I cannot help but arrange these postcards of different yellows in my head, some vibrant and the others mellow, some seasonal and a few born out of idle musings.

Mangoes, the golden-yellow summer delights! Wherever you look, there they are - heaped in small carts lining the roadsides, dominating the fruits section in supermarkets, pulped and candied in thin, long strips, sliced and spiced in tempting pickle jars, and so on. One wonders if they'd still be such a rage if they weren't seasonal.

The full-of-hopes-yellow cover of A Thousand Splendid Suns, a tale equally, if not more heart-rending than The Kite Runner. It officially stamps me as a Khaled Hosseini fan and coincidentally, the end of May will see the release of his third novel which has already been pre-ordered online.

Yellow trumpet flowers paving the sun-beaten, desolate streets, cheerfully reminding one of the brighter aspects of an Indian summer. One could do well with a leaf or two from their book of resilience and steadfastness.

And finally, my pair of miniature yellow Bavarian clogs, which has stirred the travel bug in me that was lying dormant for a while. Gripped by a major bout of hill nostalgia, I long for a bit of the proverbial mountain air, where colorful prayer flags flutter against a blue, blue sky and the reverberating gong of a monastery makes the hills come alive. Sounds like the perfect daydream to be lost in for a while!

Home

"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

~ Basho

Home. After two years. That familiar sparkle of happiness on two sets of tired, waiting faces. Those old, unaltered spaces of comfort. Books, old and new, awaiting my arrival, neatly stacked by my father. The enchantment of summer all around. My mother's garden, a playground of colours. Faint whiff of hibiscus in the air; some decked up, fresh and dewy, on the sacred basil every morning. Mangoes galore, those forever summer magnets. Their trees laden with fruit, an orchestra pad for cuckoos and other chatty birds. Wake up calls and evening ballads they leave behind, every day. And every day the journey gets lovelier, more complete.

Of course, Ma's food adds the final dollop of bliss to this perfect summer recipe.

Of monsoons and memories

It is almost a year and some stubborn bouts of homesickness since my last trip home. I remember the monsoons had just waltzed in, washing away the dirt and sins of a merciless summer. How deliciously green everything looked! Shining with innocence and stripped of pretense, the very air smelled of love. And by love, I mean that first teenage crush, the galore of unexplained giggles and the ignorance that it can never end. Blessed foolishness!

The feisty gulmohar, in its blazing orangeness, played the perfect coy mistress to the hilt. She was the star of the garden and who were the dashing paper-kite butterflies to resist such charm?! What a grand garden feast it was! The pomegranate tree carried a confusing weight of both the blossoms as well as the tiny fruits, as if in a hurry to greet the rains. Amid all this burst of life surrounding me, a mean viral fever tried hard to dampen my joy, but in vain. The bedside window wasn't good enough when the earth was crooning its most romantic song.

The plump mangoes had fallen of their branches, impatient to rest on the fragrant, rain-kissed earth. How we had devoured them - raw with salt and red chilly flakes, chutney-ed, juiced, pickled. There is something about mangoes that always brings back childhood memories, of summer vacations and grandma's old house. That is the place where stories are told and memories are spun, where parents cease to be themselves and allow you to make a clown of yourself.

The rains also brought a winged guest one afternoon - an enchanting kingfisher. I had never seen one from such proximity and thus was thrilled beyond imagination. It sat on the same branch for about an hour, in its blue finery, as if brooding over its hapless past. Sometimes it made annoying faces and ruffled its beautiful feathers, as if I was a paparazzi interrupting the precious meditation. I was only too fortunate to have a treasure trove of some perfect birdie shots and how effortlessly! As if the kingfisher knew it takes only moments before I would get tired from perfection, it flew away, perhaps to some faraway distant place.

Just like I did after a fortnight.