When summer first arrived many months ago, the first thing I did was to set out a picnic rug on the porch. We’d just returned from the park and the warmth was surprising; thrill and adrenaline jumping in my body as I set out plates on the the tartan blanket. In moments, Sufi appeared cross-legged-down and plates containing boiled eggs and steamed broccoli took their place next fillets of fried Fish. Somehow, music played around cups of fizzy wine.
Technically it was the first calendar day of Spring, but everyone knows that Summer begins at Spring, just like the weekend begins at lunch on Friday. As the season progressed, layers of clothes were shed and underused muscles grew in their place — smile muscles, sitting with people in the sunshine muscles, beach tent muscles. I clicked photographs of my neighbour’s tree, the stunning metamorphosis of it — bereft only weeks ago, in full green plumage now — the talk of our street.
I also made use of every patch of open sky I had in our first floor walk-up: my sweet balcony with its ageing furniture and visiting mudlarks, the porch outside my front door, lined in brick and sheltering plants, possums and the odd spider web. The skylight in my daughter’s room ,underneath which we always assembled to build puzzles and eat fruit.
The reverse of this cycle began yesterday, the first calendar day of Autumn. I began chanting in hushed urgent tones — “Winter does not begin on the first day of Autumn!”. A frail ploy weakening each time the sun dipped coyly ahead of schedule. There was a sinister gathering of grey clouds in the sky too. They dispersed soon enough, but not before coughing about their imminent return. The dogs on the street have their fur fully grown out, small coats appeared on babies as mothers scurried past without making eye-contact with the winds.
In Western India, seasons all bled colour into each other, and everything was always backlit by warmth. In the middle of the year, rain gushed down in sheets announcing the monsoons, again reliably laced with incalescence. The way to tell the seasons apart was always less pedantic there — our watchman Joshi would one day arrive and scamper up the Alphanso tree while my dad held out a big burlap sack for him to volley the mangoes down into.
The honeyed fruits would then cover every flat surface in the house — counters, floors, stairs. We’d sniff our way to which one was the ripest, then sit around on the floor feasting, an-all-you-can-eat buffet. Mum and dad would later colour-code them into large groups, greenest to the fieriest of orange, an order to follow while eating.
Gangs of us cousins, all still in our school uniforms, then portioned the mangoes into boxes to leave at our neighbours’ doorsteps — A jolly announcement that Summer is here.
