The Indian summer is well known for its brutal onslaught of heat - unrelenting and harshly punishing. The picture is all too familiar to someone who has grown up in Nagpur, where the word "sunstroke" crops up very casually in conversations among children and adults alike.
The word also brings back a sharp memory of Mrs Nair, our KG. 2 teacher having a dizzy spell, and suddenly stepping out on the tiny balcony of our classroom where she rested for a few minutes. We were all of five years old then and knew that it was a touch of the sun that had caused it.
While the heat and dust of daytime is dealt with by people using all the resources available to them, the charm of summer nights is never spoken about. The story remains untold as it gets sort of overshadowed by the trials and tribulations of summer days that everyone has to endure while seeing the summer through.
The nights come wrapped in perfumes of a variety of summer flowers that bloom with gay abandon, bathing everything around them in their heavenly fragrance.
It is nature's sweet and silent way of soothing the frayed nerves and tempers of the heat weary people.
The tiny white Raatrani flowers growing in clusters on a large shrub have a rather strong overpowering scent that can be appreciated only in small doses.
Summer and Jasmine are synonymous to say the least as one is incomplete without the other. The stark bare brown stems rising out of the brown soil hardly clamour for attention as they look more like sticks pulled out of a broom and stuck into the soil.
But the rising temperatures almost act as a growth stimulating hormone and within days the stems are covered with tiny green petioles supporting the steadily growing baby leaves.
The impatient wait for the buds to appear is soon rewarded when tender green sepals burst forth cradling the pearly white buds.
The tightly whorled buds slowly grow bigger and one fine night the soft petals unfurl bit by bit to unleash the most distinctive and refreshing perfume that leaves me enchanted.
The sweetly intoxicating scent emanating from a wild profusion of the pink and white Rangoon Creeper is equally heady.
In the quiet of the dark warm night when the scented breeze wafts over in a gently teasing manner there is a momentary cleansing of the heart and mind as there is no room for another thought in either of the places. The fragrance, so pure and beautiful seems to fill it all.
We have a lot to be grateful for, don't we !
The exclusivity of our summer nights lies in our privilege to sleep under the stars, under the huge canopy of the dark sky while being lulled by the night sounds into a deep comforting sleep.
In the days of yesteryear it was something of a ritual. It started a few days after Holi when the days would get warmer and the.nights wouldn't be as chilly. Soon a day would be chosen and the excitement would begin.
As the daylight stretched well into the evening the terrace or the courtyard would be cooled by drenching it with a few buckets of water.
Then the beds would be brought out along with the bed linen. At times the mosquito nets would be put up too. The sleeping arrangements would also include a Surai, an earthen pot filled with water. It would be kept on a waist high projection of the terrace wall.
Lying down on the cool sheets at bedtime was most pleasurable.
Much later the silence of the night would be punctuated by the shrill sound of the Gurkha's whistle and the banging of his stick as he would make his customary rounds along all the lanes of the area. It was enough to strike fear into the hearts of innocent bachchas like me.
Gazing up at the sky trying to locate the saptarshis and sometimes trying hard to count as many stars as possible, the magical fingers of sleep would slowly glide across the eyes and many hours later we would wake up to the screeching sound of the parrots as they winged across the blue sky to go in search of food.
I particularly remember one night spent on the terrace of an acquaintance of my father, while we were on a road trip to Pune. That night our gracious hosts put up extra mattresses on the terrace of their house. As it was a small town there were just a few scattered houses in the vicinity and nothing to spoil the pristine beauty of the sky.
We fell asleep with the cool night breeze sighing all around us. As dawn approached I opened my eyes and gazed in wordless wonder at the expanse of the sky.
That star studded bed of velvet appeared so close that I almost imagined that if I stretched out my hand I could easily pluck the stars out of the sky and string them in a thick beautiful gajra !
The beauty of that night has stayed with me through all these years and the memory brings a lot of tranquility with it. I look at it as a gift offered so effortlessly by none other than a summer night.
Nature I feel enhances the goodness in a person while melting away the sharp jagged edges of all the negativity that lies at the deepest end of the labyrinth of one's mind.
Now with changed times it is no longer possible to continue with the old ways and mostly people prefer to sleep indoors enjoying the comfort of the desert coolers or within the cool confines of their air conditioned houses.
But even now at the end of a sultry day when the house becomes unbearably hot, I stand at the window loving the feel of the cool breeze on my face, my first thought is about placing my bed outside near the gate and going off to sleep without a care in the world.
Oh well! That's wishful thinking of course. Nevertheless the beauty of summer nights will continue to be eternal and timeless.
So here's what my muse aka the summer night has inspired me to write..
Summer days are long and hot
Ruled by the scorching sun
Blazing down on earthly beings
In a glory matched by none
Peeping stars at eventide
Herald the end of day
Birds rush back to rest n nestle
In their nests of twigs of hay
The warm flagstoned garden
Awaits a familiar footfall
To wrap it ever so lightly
In its sweetly scented shawl
The cloak of darkness falls softly
The breeze a soothing balm
The world sighs contentedly
And sleeps in grateful calm......
