Whispers of Summer

Whispers of Summer

The summer I turned fifteen was the summer the mango tree whispered my secrets to the wind.

It stood at the far end of my grandmother’s backyard in a sleepy village where the roads knew no tar and the sky wore the sun like a crown. Every May, my mother and I would leave our cramped city flat and the smell of petrol behind, and arrive at Ammamma’s house — a red-tiled haven that smelled of wood smoke, cardamom, and memories too old to be spoken aloud.

I dreaded the first few days every year. There was no television, no friends, and worst of all, no fan to beat back the village heat that clung to my skin like a lover. But by the third day, the magic of Ammamma’s world would seduce me again. It always did.

Mornings meant waking up to the screech of peacocks and the rhythmic thump of a broom sweeping the courtyard. Evenings meant listening to Ammamma hum old folk songs while she sifted rice on the verandah. But afternoons — those languid afternoons — belonged to me and the mango tree.

It was a sprawling giant, its branches so low they formed a green tent. Inside, I had my kingdom: a battered notebook, a stolen bottle of my uncle’s ink, and dreams too big for the pages they filled. Sometimes I wrote poems for the monsoon I longed for; sometimes I wrote letters to a future self I imagined braver and prettier. And always, I’d read them aloud to the tree, certain it was listening.

It was on one such afternoon, the sun balancing on the rim of the sky, that I met him.

I was perched on my favorite branch, sticky with mango juice, scribbling verses about clouds, when I heard a rustle. A boy, not much older than me, emerged from behind the trunk. His hair was a mess of curls, and his eyes were the color of the village pond in June — restless and secretive.

“You’re trespassing,” I said, because it seemed like the thing to say.

He grinned, revealing a chipped front tooth. “So are you. This is my tree.”

I narrowed my eyes. “It’s my grandmother’s backyard. So technically, my tree.”

He only shrugged, then plucked a half-ripe mango and bit into it without ceremony. “Fair enough. We can share it.”

I should have shooed him away. Instead, I watched him eat the mango, juice dribbling down his chin. Then, without asking, he clambered up beside me and peered at my notebook.

“Poems?”

“None of your business.”

“They’re sad.”

“They’re private!” I snapped, pulling the notebook away.

He didn’t apologize. He only leaned back against the branch, eyes half-closed, as if listening to the same wind that made the leaves dance around us.

“Sad poems in summer are bad luck, you know,” he said softly. “Summer is for wishes.”

That was the beginning.

Every day after lunch, he’d be waiting near the tree. Sometimes he brought fistfuls of stolen gooseberries; sometimes just riddles and stories so wild they had to be lies. He said his name was Aru. He said he was a fisherman’s son, or maybe a cloud turned human, or maybe both. He never gave the same answer twice.

One afternoon, the air smelled of distant rain. We lay side by side on a thick branch, staring at the sky through the green canopy.

“Tell me a wish,” he whispered.

I hesitated. My family didn’t believe in wishes, only in hard work and prayers. But the tree listened. Maybe Aru did too.

“I wish…” I began, closing my eyes. “I wish to leave this place someday. To see cities so big they touch the clouds. To write books that people remember. To be… more than just a girl in a village.”

I felt him watching me, his breath warm on my cheek. “Then promise me something.”

“What?”

“When you become all that… remember this summer. And this tree. And me.”

I laughed. “Are you planning to vanish like a ghost?”

He didn’t laugh back. He only smiled, so gently that something inside me fluttered and feared.

“Promise?” he insisted.

“I promise.”

The next day, he didn’t come. Nor the day after. I searched the pond, the fields, even the dusty lanes that led to the fishing docks. Nobody knew an Aru. No fisherman’s son with a chipped tooth and eyes like restless water. My grandmother only chuckled when I asked.

“Maybe you dreamed him up, kutti. This old tree is full of mischief. It makes lonely children see what they want to see.”

But I knew. He had been real. Or at least, real enough.

When we left at the end of May, I hugged the tree goodbye. I pressed my palm against its bark and whispered, “Keep my secrets. Keep his too.”

Years blurred by like pages fluttering in the wind. Summers grew shorter as exams, college, jobs — all the grown-up things — claimed my days. Ammamma’s house fell quiet after she was gone. I visited less and less, until even the mango tree became just another childhood photograph folded inside my mind.

Then, one April, much older and carrying a laptop instead of a notebook, I returned. My city life was falling apart in spectacular ways — deadlines unmet, a love that hurt more than healed, and a heart so tired I could barely write a grocery list, let alone a book.

I stepped off the bus at dawn, the village still asleep, and walked straight to the backyard.

The mango tree had aged like an old friend: gnarled roots pushing at the earth, branches bowing low with sweet fruit. I crawled back into my old hiding spot, feeling the bark scratch my elbows like it used to.

I don’t know how long I sat there, eyes closed, cheek pressed to the branch. Long enough for the sun to climb and the cicadas to start their summer chorus.

And then, faintly, as if carried by the wind through the leaves, I heard it — a laugh, familiar and echoing inside my ribs.

“Aru?” I whispered, not daring to open my eyes.

The wind rustled the leaves, and for a moment, the tree smelled of mangoes and childhood and a boy who may have been a wish himself.

I pulled out my laptop, fingers trembling, tears slipping free at last. Words poured out faster than I could shape them — poems, stories, entire worlds. All the books I had been too busy, too scared to write.

Above me, the branches swayed and whispered secrets to the wind. And somewhere between the lines I typed, I found him again — my Aru, my summer, my promise.

Some say wishes die when you grow up. But some summers — if you listen close enough — never stop whispering.