SAVORING SUMMER!

Photo credit: www.agrination.com
Memory tag:Stopping for tea at Nongpoh, enroute to Guwahati, from Shillong.

The blast furnace heat of summer often blinds us to the beauty of this season. A simple tea and samosa at Nongpoh, enroute to Guwahati were transformed into a magical alfresco meal under the golmohor canopy. I messaged this to some friends. A particularly kindred spirit messaged back, “what the hell are you doing there?” Precisely! Only mad dogs and Englishmen brave the mid summer sun!  The year begins flame of the forest, silk cotton and bauhinia coming in with spring.  The driver pushes the speed to 80 plus, the hot air becomes a strong breeze, towns, villages flash past. Trees hung with green mangoes, fields of rice with half ripe golden kernels, the red golmohor, the copper pod and laburnum in glowing yellow and the cassia from a paler shade of pink to a bicolor duet, all seem to thrive in the long heat filled days of summer. The dramatic heat and light of summer helps them to ripen to a golden harvest. These seeds and fruits will await the waters of the monsoons to renew life pledged in the heat of summer.

Gold, gold, gold! Golden sunshine, golden muga, golden harvest, golden succulent mango; gold the colour of this season! In this land of brilliant, blazing sunshine, little wonder why gold and yellow are auspicious. This heat cracks the earth, dries life sustaining water and then creates low pressure areas to lure in the rain filled monsoon winds! It fries tempers to a frazzle!!Thank God for summer holidays! I remember, my historian father saying most wars are fought in summer, when the smallest incursion becomes an invasion. On the other hand what pleasure to watch and dip into mango and other pickles drying in the sun! By Adam, is stolen fruit is  sweet!  Trees climbed, mangoes stolen and eaten with salt secretly stashed in our salad days hold a special place in our lives.

A few weeks ago, we rounded off a delectable Sunday lunch with cool delicate green pieces of melon. The host, a botanist by training and a naturalist at heart, pointed out how water filled fruits abound in summer! Water melons in pushcarts dot the globe in summer. Remember Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday? An unforgettable black and white montage of a princess on her day out snatched from the shackles of her golden cage. An off guard princess biting into a watermelon on the streets of Rome!! Summer touches us all!

While most of India swelters in the heat of summer, we in the hill stations live our lives, naturally air conditioned!  I had to call in help to switch on the air condition in the guest house room. I am, one of those gadget challenged persons.  The attendant left the room with an indulgent smile. He had switched it on with a practiced, single, nonchalant flip! Adjusted to 22 degrees, the room was just not ‘cool’ to me! Only then did I realize these are midday temperatures for us in Shillong. We live everyday where others come to holiday. Taking a taxi from Police Bazaar to Laitumkrah,   the lady next to me suddenly gestured in speechless delight. A single mauve Jacaranda bloom had fallen into her lap as the taxi passed under the tree!  These trees grace the entrance near the  DC’s office and dot the hillsides and roads of Shillong town.  They border the road past Barapani we drive towards Guwahati in April. Walk down today, from State Central Library to the Secretariat and hold your breath! Near the MSEB offices are two trees laden with cream colored magnolia blossoms in all their glory! They all seem to say, “when you see color, think of us!”