Maavichiguru tinagaanee…koyila palikenaa…”
(Soon as she eats the tender buds of mango, the koel
sings...)
The famous Telugu song of yester years, stirs my soul. I
lay languidly on the couch, entranced by the effect the song has on me. I drift
dreamily into the idyllic days of my childhood…summertime. Coming from one of
the hottest places in India, Vijayawada, I don’t have any memories of discomfort
the heat had on us children. With the temperature hovering around 45 – 49
degrees, it was pretty easy to succumb to a heat stroke. Sans ACs, sans cold
drinks in the refrigerator, the summer vacation passed amidst fun, frolic and
two months of absolute bliss. But thankfully my granny always had a
vessel full of buttermilk and kids were encouraged to drink a lot of it. It was
that part of our lives when we were living in our ancestral house, the
headquarters of our family network. We would look forward with almost a painful
impatience for the annual exams to get over and the vacation to start.
Watching the mango trees in our yard go through their
seasonal changes was fascinating. The fragrance of the flowers in full bloom
assured us that summer was ‘just round the corner’. The heady essence of the
flowers in the air would leave us pining for summer holidays and with it the
mangoes. The flowers finally gave way to tiny buds of green tender mangoes for
which we fought with equal fervor along with the greedy parrots and the
‘innocent’ squirrels. The elders’ repeated warnings against eating the tender mangoes,
seldom had any effect on our strong determination to eat them. These episodes
were soon followed by sore throats and coughs and would temporarily make us
‘repent’ our arrogance. But a couple of days in bed, we were up again lazing
around in the heat of the summer afternoon under the mango tree.
The rising temperature also brought with it the most
eagerly-awaited summer activity – making pickles. My fondest memory of
pickle-making was watching the men and women in the family join the process with
great excitement. My grandmother, the head of the family (and the keeper of the
secret family pickle recipes), would make a few quick calls to the local grocer
for the required spices (chili, mustard, fenugreek) and the mango vendor to
check whether the raw mangoes have finally arrived in the market. While the men
were involved in the more laborious activities of plucking the mangoes, washing
and skillfully cutting them into surprisingly similar sizes, the women got busy
with the drying, grinding, measuring and mixing of the spices with the cut
mangoes and oil with precision. And finally it was time to taste. First the
fresh pickle was mixed with the right amount of hot, steaming rice, with a
generous amount of ghee added to it. The rice was then blended uniformly taking
care that each grain of rice is well coated with the red pickle before it was
ready for tasting. We would feel amused watching the adults judge each mouthful
with a groan or a grunt and comical expressions of rolling up their half-open
eyes or twisting their mouths 360 degrees before they proclaimed whether their
effort was successful or not.
While the grown-ups were busy with the seasonal activities
of making pickles, papads and desiccated vegetables, we kids would make cunning
plots to steal salted mango pieces from the terrace, where they were laid out
on transparent plastic sheets for drying. A couple of successful attempts would
increase our greed for more and one of us would fall prey to the ire of the
cook or my grandmother. But much to our delight, after a few ‘scolds’ from both
the women, we would end up getting a handful of mango pieces as a double treat.
Years later my grandmother confessed proudly that the joy of making pickles
wouldn’t have been as memorable if there were no mischievous children hovering
over you.
Summer vacation brought home a bunch of cousins from other
parts of the country. There was a silent understanding between the boys’ gang
and the girls’ group to stay away from each other’s mischief. While the boys
tried hard to ignore the girls, they would finally give in to our jollier and
more entertaining activities that we indulged in with our constant innovative
games. One popular pastime was to whip up interesting ‘recipes’ in our
miniature cooking set (we had a box-full of these). We would make plans even
before the start of the vacation to collect a little money and stock up on
ingredients such as honey and phutana dal while sugar, rice, and dal were
supplied reluctantly by our mom. And the magical ingredient to anything we whipped
up was the good old baby mangoes. The boys, noticing that playing with us was
more profitable, would be eager to help us and sometimes were employed to steal
stuff from the kitchen for our gourmet cooking. The result of all this excitement
was when we had to taste our concoction. While most times we ended up with a
fabulously tasty preparation, on the rare occasions when the cooking indeed
horribly went wrong, we would each try to desperately gulp down the retch that
threatened to spill out.
Sleeping on the terrace was another
exciting part of the vacation. With the floor of the terrace heated up during
the day enough to fry an egg, we would try to cool it down with buckets of
water poured on the floor. The hot ground steamed with the touch of cool water
and soon, with a few bucketfuls more, the floor was ready to be used for our
post-dinner activities. Dinner at 7:00 was soon followed by setting the
stage for our mini-theatre. The older kids in the gang always got to choose the
themes and plots of our plays. Then they would carefully decide who would play
which character. With a few last minute alterations, we were ready with our
parts and so went the evening amidst squeals of laughter.
Now far far away from those times, summer still tickles me
with the same eagerness and pleasure it always did. With two daughters at home,
the excitement that summer vacation brings with it has not changed at all. Our
pretend plays and fun times with cousins are now replaced by my kids’ summer
camps, sleep overs with friends and a constant stream of summer parties. I
relive the moments of my childhood with the same childish fervor.
As I gaze out of the window enjoying the cacophony of the
squirrels, koels and the chattering parrots perched on a thick branch of a
mango tree, I couldn’t help notice a quick mischievous wink by the koel,
singing what I thought was
“Gunnamaamidi kommameeda…”
(On the branch of a
ripe mango tree…a popular and old Telugu film song)
P. Jyoti Kiran
Lecturer in English
Goa
