And The Living Was Easy

Summers Past.

A drop of warm sweat meanders down my spine.

And I’m thinking basketball. Vest so drenched i could wring it, squeeze it dry, quadrangle floor so hot you had to play with shoes or blister.

I’m thinking long, hazy afternoons, a broad almond tree that was pirate ship, Tarzan’s jungle and so much more. I’m thinking chor-police, hide-and-seek and dabba futli over eight building compounds in the long twilight and no worries about being called home now, because the exams were over!

I’m remembering gazing ardently up into mango trees, willing the fruit to ripen, knocking down a few just to check whether, perhaps, that small size and green skin was just the tree trying to fool us. And then the grimace of perverse pleasure as you bit and found so-uuurrrr.

And going up to one particular friend’s house for water, because they had a fridge.

I’m smiling about 25 paise coins hoarded from errands, splurged on little plastic tubes filled with flavoured ice, where you bit through the heat-sealed edge and sucked – pepsis they were called, with a lower-case ‘p.’ Soft drinks were rare – they cost all of two bucks, who had that kind of money? – reserved for restaurant visits with one’s parents.

And that long, sweet last summer between school and college. Three months of utter irresponsibility only now and then sullied with the quaking terror of SSC marks day. Badminton in the still cool, early morning air. Racing off to the lending library to pick up the daily fix of books and comics, and then, lying with them on the cool floor, legs propped up on the nearest piece of furniture, lost in faraway places of the mind. An evening of six, maybe eight innings of cricket, and when bad light – well, no light, actually – stopped play, sitting on swings vacated by the little kids and those strange creatures, girls.

College hols, the games stayed, but there were new preoccupations too. “Summer clubs,” that delightful suburban custom – a month of semi-organised competitions and fun, sports, plays, singing, dancing, cycle treasure hunts. Begging the use of houses and terraces to sit and plan, madly practising and rehearsing, borrowing props, stealing ideas, siblings in different teams not talking to each other all summer.

We’d moved upmarket by then, to the golavala. Almost drooling as he scraped ice into a glass, packed it around a stick, anointed it with syrup and dunked it into the glass, topped up with more syrup and water.

And cycles. Everywhere. Extensions of our bodies. Taking us further than we could run. From one frenzied arena to another. And then racing down quiet back streets, outstripping dogs, avoiding night patrol cops, composing excuses on the way as to why one was so late. Thinking also of how, one day, we too would have motorbikes. Maybe even cars.

And the sudden discovery that there was something compellingly, magnetically, irresistibly attractive about those girls. Twilight hours spent sitting on gates and bus stops in hushed discussions of the relative merits of one lissome lass after another as they passed by on the way back from whatever it was girls did in the evenings. Crushes and lust and heartbreak analysed threadbare, but seldom acted on, except by the bold, much-envied few. At least they said they did.

Which led to the summer of learning how to dance. Feet used to pedalling and running and jumping now having to learn how to take small steps, you idiot, and don’t pull so much.

And the beach, yes, the beach. Contract busses hired, lunches packed, and away, two hours of ribald songs and laughter, to the relatively safe sea of Gorai. Hours in the water, skin wrinkled on the fingers and burnt on the nose and shoulders. Eyes looking, and trying not to be seen to look, at girls in swim suits.

But summer ended when college did.

Yes, there was a certain kick to playing adult. To office clothes, and an office bag, and doing lunch andmaking a salary. But that attraction wears off in summer.

Because offices don’t give you a couple of months of summer holidays. You have to pass kids playing in the street. You can’t pitch hopeful stones into mango trees. Sweat is a social handicap. There isn’t time to idle aimlessly at street corners. There’s only corporate games and posing. They want you to work in summer.

Well, yeah, sure, I can afford more than golas now, but somehow, somehow, I can’t help thinking the trade-off wasn’t fair.

Published in the Times of India’s Mumbai edition, Snaphot,in a slightly edited version. Snapshot was a weekly column that aimed to "capture that quintessentially Mumbai state of mind." Sadly, TOI discontinued it.

Tags: The Times of India, Snapshot