Here's Summer & Nostalgia !

March, April and May have a very special place in my heart. At least, they used to. Inspite of the scorching heat, I used to look forward to a lot of things ... Annual exams and the sense of achievement after completing them :) , Half a day school ... Mangoes , water melons and palm fruits ... House full of cousins ... Snakes & ladders, ludo and business ..Mugs and mugs of Rasna and so on..

In fact, 'The Making of Rasna' used to be a big ceremony in itself.. After hours of pleading, my grandfather would decide to give in and tell us to decide the flavour. That's it.. We used to turn the household into a Kurukshetra battlefield.. Each of us would want a different one. Ultimately we would settle down to one and thatha used to bring it home!!

A typical summer day would begin with all of us getting up at 6 'o clock because in April May Kanchipuram had those 'Varadarajar urchavams'. Urchavam is the tamil word for temple festivals. The deity used to be decorated and brought out in a procession to all the important streets of the town. After the deity passes our house, we had to take bath . This is technically that period of the day, when our fights start. Each would try to send the others to the bathroom and mom used to take arbitratry decisions on whom to call !!

After the bath and a sumptuous meal we used to doze off and get up in time for lunch. We would debate on what to play and would settle down for dice mostly. Those dark (curtains closed) , quiet afternoons with no sound other than the metallic clang of the dice hitting the floor remains the best memories of my childhood.

We were never short of mangoes and melons and would dig up a hole in our garden to sow the mango seeds. Today , there are 6 -7 trees in our yard and whenever we meet, we talk about which tree belongs to whom..

Boys used to play cricket in the evenings and girls used to watch them or give live commentary. They made sure that the girls do not remain cricket illiterate :D ! Heated discussions on who would retrieve the ball from our next compound or from the garden well were inevitable..And yeah, whether Sachin or Jayasuriya was the best!! When the racket used to exceed limits, thatha used to come and shoo us off..Then we had to content ourselves palying see-saw on the haystack.

Nights were fun..we used to play a stupid game called 'Kalla Manna' in the moonlight. The rules were simple. The 'Catcher' would stand on mud and rest would stand on cement. Those standing on cement should leave theirs,pass by the mud and stand on a different platform. In the transit, if he/she is caught, he will be the next catcher. When we used to become exhausted, we d sit down and start anthakshari and go on till it was time for bed.

Someday, we all used to get adventurous and demand that we be taken out like the 'other children'. Then amma and perimma ( mom and mom's sister) will plan a trip (to the temple in the next street :P) . We used to be very disiplined on the streets. Otherwise we would never get strawberry icecream from the only 'Arun ice cream' parlour in the town!! All the years , we never broke this tradition. Of going to that temple, playing hide n seek there, eating Arun icecream and coming home ecstasic..

This would go on for a month and a half and suddenly it would be June. Cousins would pack up and leave for Madras and all the sheen would be lost for a year. But we never used to mind because there was certainty in life. We knew that the next year would be the same. After all, we had amma and appa, thatha and paati to take care of us. .We were a beautiful family :) !!