Summer Dreams

Summer is here…with the usual complaints and bothers of too much heat, too much sweat, too much of traffic, too much of everything….as I sit in my AC office and think bout the summer outside, its not the present summer that comes to my mind…it’s the summers of the past that weave their magic over my memories….I see the kids today going off to their fancy hobby classes and summer camps and what not….and all I can think of is…do they really need such an elaborate plan to pass their “vacation”? Here’s how we did it in the good old days….


Summer…its vacation time!!!! No school….no teachers…no homework!!!!

Summer merry-making was kicked off by the traditional gathering of all the cousins who were in the kids category at my granny’s place. Why her place? Simple…my granny is the best cook in the world….fish, chicken, snacks, lunch, dinner, snack-sized nibbles…u name it she cooked it….not to mention mangoes!!! SLURPPPPP!!! Mango-the fruit, mango milkshake, mango ice-cream, mango kulfi, mango juice, the traditional aamras, mango lassi…u get the gist…:)

After the gathering was completed, there was an inventory done of all the possible weapons/potential weapons in the house…there was no mention of dolls coz I was seriously outnumbered in the girls-guys ratio by 1: infinity….its a good thing those happened to be my tomboy years…I happily joined in all the battle strategies and general bashing sessions that we had….my personal fav was battleship….where we accumulated all the pillows and cushion-type things in the house and made an impenetrable fortress. The poor landlubber team (we were very particular about our land-water-sea-ocean concepts) had to then fight a gory battle with us sea folk for winning our battleship. Our weaponry comprised of a unique union of mythology & technology. We had everything from slingshots (a la Eklavya), dart guns (70s-80s movie ishtyle), gadhas (remember Hanuman’s club?), sophisticated machine guns(Rambo inspired), bow-n-arrows ( Ramayana, Mahabharata and all other Ramanand Sagar creations) and so on…and if all else failed the pillows that formed our battleship also doubled up as weapons.

After running around the house and the building compound while screaming war cries at the top of our lungs for the entire morning, we would finally listen to our granny's feeble protests of “don’t create a ruckus” and would take the 2nd break from our mighty battles. The 1st break was when the gola-wala would hit the streets…he was a peculiar creature who would come to our street corner every day around noon with his cart. He had a little tinkling bell that heralded his arrival from afar. As soon as those chimes reached our ears, we would drop everything and run off to our respective homes for money and bowls to get the golas + extra syrup in…onlookers probably saw only a blur of human flesh as we completed the route from playground to home to gola-cart in supersonic speeds. The fact that our 2nd play break would coincide with lunch hour was just a coincidence and had no relevance whatsoever with our hunger pangs. After filling our tummies with the earlier mentioned delicacies, we would resume our games – only now we would play serious, intellectual (read: non scream-able) games. We did this to enhance our creativity and intelligence. The fact that if we played any game that involved speaking in volumes above a certain decibel level would evoke a slow and painful death from the disapproving glares of the oldies in the building. So we played carom, scrabble, Scotland Yard, Business, etc… (Jus tawt if I should include that in my appraisal data…under the creativity/ business/analysis skills section :-) ).

After this display of tremendous patience and self-control till bout 4 in the evening we would unleash the primate inside us and revert back to the screaming games. We had an informal rota for this…every day one kid would have to be the one who goes to everyone else’s house to ask “Aunty, can so-and-so come out and play?” Of course no one could afford to risk their life everyday hence the rota… (Kinda similar to the support rota we have now ;-) ). And the games would begin again…gully-cricket, marbles, some alien kind of football, night badminton, kho-kho, hide-n-seek (this was super fun if sum new kid was the seeker…our idea of hiding was goin to sum1’s house and hogging on snacks or playing some other game while the poor kid “seeked” heaven n earth for us).


Finally at dinner time, we would return to our homes, tired and sweatier than sweat itself…there were no concepts of fancy deodorants then….if we reeked, we simply bathed and went out again…it didn’t matter then dat we bathed like 3-4 times a day (1- the official start-of-the-day morning bath, 2- the post morning ruckus pre-lunch bath, 3- the post evening havoc pre-dinner bath and 4- the last just before bed bath). After dinner, we would head out again for a round of badminton or stay in and have card tournaments…jus coz we were kids doesn’t mean we didn’t take our games seriously…we meticulously kept scores of everything and often had arguments over the scores that were longer than the game itself. This was where the leader came into picture. The leader was the one who had the most influence over the kids. Even as kids we had a keen sense of politics and voted a leader every often who would give the final decision when matters couldn’t be sorted even by fists, blows and kiddie-level abuses. Not once did our playground squabbles ever reach the ears of our parents. We were probably the best example of a fully functional democratic unit.

When we finally did hit the bed to supposedly sleep, we didn’t give in to sleep just yet. This was when we talked bout the lil things that mattered…since we were cousins, we talked bout our respective parents, our schools, our friends, our latest toys, what was the coolest thing we learnt last and so on. We weren’t a joint family per say…but we were definitely connected.


As I look back sometimes on those days gone by…and remember the friends, the food, the games, the times, the top scores, the talks….I’m filled with a deep sense of nostalgia about those wonderful summers…..and the lines of a song from the movie Grease come to mind….

“Summer dreams…ripped at the seams
But oh….oh those summer nights”