Magical Summers

I was born in the summer of 73. My grandmother used to say it was Buddha Purnima( An auspicious day; Birth Anniversary of Lord Buddha)

I don’t know how much of  this beautiful crazy life I have been living so far, has been due to being born on this day, but I used to feel I was special and to be blessed with magical powers in future with which one day I wouldn’t have to do menial things like homework.. 🙂

When you are a kid every thing is magical but summers were pretty special and adventurous. Nothing can beat summer vacations and of course my parents did everything they could to make it an amazing journey.

A typical summer  morning would start with morning walk to the near by abandoned golf course… me, my brother and my mom.. and often mom would take us to new places and we would walk under the bridges, or brave some slopes to taste that yummy looking berry.Oh it was so much fun….

This one day dad and mom decided we will go trekking in a nearby forest( just like that) mom packed water and whatever food she had ready at that time and off we went.

we were deep in the forest when we met a man and when asked he told us to go back as there were tigers(and a river) just five minutes or so away from where we where. Now any other mortal would have gone back but not us… my father was carrying just a stick but in our family we don’t go back, no sir( come to think of it its the attitude that matters isn’t it)…so we went ahead and  after walking for half an hour or so in search of The Great River and even Greater bunch of Wild Hungry Cats we could only be graced by presence of extremely thin stream of water……and as for the cats, nope no such luck…that incident till to date has remained our favourite story whenever we get together…

My parents pretty much shaped and coloured a beautiful adventurous spirit in us,travelling through all the known and lesser travelled path that was one day going to help us  living in present and shaping the future …

Once you have tasted this kind of adventure, freedom..your soul will never let’s you be shackled( may good may be not ) but it stays and tells  you to try more do more

Every afternoon mom would read us Famous Five, Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew  …we literally grew up listening to and later on reading these books…those were days when I wanted/wished for  two things-

• that the summer vacations never end
• I become a famous detective

this may also be the reason why I love reading thrillers and ghost stories.

Now the ghost story obsession came from my paternal grandmother and Dad. They would tell us all kinds of stories about their ancestors and folklores and ghosts….

But we will talk about them some other day…and believe me those stories are gems and you wouldn’t want to miss them..but for now back to summer

The best part of summer vacation was the new delicacies mom used to cook/bake for us

Starting from iced lemon teas to cup full of special coffee foam( my mom would cook anything and everything to make our summers special) freshly baked homemade cakes,breads, new cuisines ….yum  yum… am drooling while writing,….

and then in the evening dad would pour a lot of water on the terrace floor to cool it and we would pretend it was swimming pool( extremely shallow one) but that didn’t deter us from behaving like toads………ah bliss.

and the day would end with me and my brother chatting nonstop animatedly about the whole day and the fun that it was and planning new day new possibilities…

those were magical summer days and nights we didn’t have to dream we were living a dream…..