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!