Whispers of Summer

Oxford dictionary defines summer as the warmest season of the year, coming between spring and autumn. It is also the season of making memories to tide us over the rest of the seasons.

Particularly, if one gets to spend summers in villages without the constant hum of machines and people rushing towards life, one can feel the peace it offers.

I’m not partial to summers now because of the heat and the constant bad moods people are in. Every day out feels like the Glucon-D ad in which the sun sucks out energy from kids. Except now it is soul-sucking in a humorless way!

On days when nothing can be done to tolerate the weather, I settle for the memories from fifteen summers ago. I closed my eyes and got transported back to a time when the only deadline was to be back by sunset. When I didn’t care if sweat pooled under my knees or in the crevices of my eyelids as I lay still between rows and rows of plantain. The leaves looked like stained glass in shades of green. If you squint your eyes close, it feels like something out of Avatar, with sunlight finding the gaps between them.

The reason for my ninja-like prowess was that I liked to cut the newest leaf from the middle of the sapling and make scrolls out of them. If you hadn’t come across plantain saplings, the leaves extend out from the middle, and each new one looks like a tightly coiled long stem. By principle, you’re not allowed to unfurl them because it stunts the growth process.

But when you are six and stupid, you don’t think about the damage your idea of fun is causing. And honestly, if your grandparents supervise you, they purposefully turn a blind eye to the antics because who else is going to spoil us?

Eventually, my mom put an end to my sapling-slashing process because I was trying to draw stick figures on the leaves and write the little bit of English, I had mastered at school that year. I made watches and ribbons for myself out of them, too. Sometimes, I tried my hand at weaving them into little mats, but I was not always successful.

The only downside was that when you gut the sapling in the middle, it oozes out sap that stains your clothes, makes your fingers sticky, and gets your mom mad! After I’d successfully gone and stained all my clothes (mind you, they didn’t go away after numerous washes), my mom said no more playing out. She said she didn’t raise a child who perpetually looks like they escaped from prison. Even the low blow towards my self-esteem did not stop me. I waited like a seasoned hunter for my mom to be occupied and took my chances.

The adrenaline rush was too much to get caught. My neck cramped often because I was always on the lookout. But the main job was to play pretend queen to my clay subjects. We discussed maps of importance, treasure hunts, and laws issued. The hot breeze carried my mom’s voice from across the field, and then I abandoned my kingdom like a novice ruler and found a new place to hide.

I think about it now and remember how I didn’t mind the weather. I realize summer was the season when nothing else mattered except for hiding between the plantain trees. Now all that lingers is the memory of sweat cooling on my forehead as I went home after another successful day of hide and rule.