This Adolescence Was So Different!

While restless bursts of rain are hitting the clogged streets of Mumbai and the lush green landscape of beautiful Kerala, the rain clouds and cool wind from the foothills of a fragile and damaged Himalaya have arrived in the capital. It is seductive and sensuous, but as deceptive as always.

For one, it kills the simmering summer heat, for a while, but just for a while. And it seems as elusive as everlasting love.

Like everlasting love, it will go away, finally, suddenly, sooner than later, for no rhyme or reason, like a flash of luminescent lightning in a nocturnal sky, or a romantic season of vermilion twilight, as the evening says goodbye to a long, lazy day of unrequited longings.

Like Vivaldi’s melodious shifting of moods in ‘Four Seasons’, summer arrives, and must arrive, with the fatedness of memory, with all the hidden loves and longings of nostalgia. April, really, never was the cruelest month. It was always hiding the innermost anticipations of summer holidays, tired of school’s boring appetite for exams and tests, and the sleepless fear of showing one’s report card to parents.

The arrival of summer is nostalgia, non-clinical or antiseptic; it is not sanitised by time’s impossibilities. Nostalgia as fast-forward. Remembrance of things future. Resurrections. Revelations. Healing.

Like the cracked lips of May.

The ‘loo’. They used to call it the loo. You could hear it like a Charles Bukowski poem, replete with the mad waves of infinite despair. The hot winds of a scorching summer, soaked with the hellish fire of the hot afternoons, when the sun would shine in the white sky, like a million white snakes slithering inside an innocent heart. A venomous and vicious heat which would seep inside the spaces between the fingers and the eye-lashes, dull sense and sensibility, while the sound of tap water, or water gushing out from a dilapidated hand pump, seemed the only relief.

For us, kids and teenagers in the small, happy town of Saharanpur in western UP, with its vast green and yellow sugarcane and mustard fields, and the smell of jaggery melting, the loo arrived as a good omen. The adventures of a small town childhood, totally unaware of the pitfalls, the narcissism, and obsessive addictions of the virtual media. We did not even have a landline.

Every day was a new day full of anticipations. You could touch the day with your fingers. You could inhale its fragrance with your eyes. Life was tangible.

In the afternoon, the elders went for a siesta, cooling the red, tiled floors with water, since there was not even a water cooler those days. A small refrigerator was bought on a monthly loan paid by my sisters with their meager salaries in a school — when the voltage would constantly fluctuate, since load-shedding was a relentless ritual in UP, as it is these days.

The sound of the fridge, as the voltage fluctuated, seemed like a miracle. The sound itself ushered in a wave of coolness; with that sound, on the cold floor, the raw mango wind coming from the neighbourhood mango orchard, would put us into a dreamless sleep. Under a mosquito net, in the open-to-sky courtyard, even while the finest old melodies would play on the All India Radio Urdu Service: Yeh raat bhigi bhigi, yeh mast fizaye, uttha dhire dhire, woh chand pyaara pyaara… Oh, the mango wind, sleep of childhood with that magical sound of the fridge!

No classes. No exams. It was the time to dream, and make all our dreams come true.

Our hormones were not running amok. This ‘Adolescence’ was so different!

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First, the cowboy books — the law hangs on the hip, inside the holster! Wow! Then, the mystery series of the famous five by Enid Blyton, borrowed from the library of St. Mary’s School, earlier only for boys, after Class 9^th, a co-ed, with stupid boys falling in love with girls who did not even have a clue about it. They would wait for hours in this heat, in bright sunlight, for the rickshaw on which she would go to and fro from school. Or, take a vantage position, waiting for her to arrive in her third floor kitchen, even for a fleeting moment. Sometimes, she never ever arrived — for days!

I had nothing to do with this stupid stuff. But they would make me write flowery love letters, because I was good in prose. These letters never would find their damned destination. Occasionally, the lucky ones could dare to declare to their beloveds who cared two hoots — I love you. Not even a passing fling, these stupid, offline, ridiculous ‘affairs’, never ever crossed the threshold of fantasy, doomed to end before they even began.

Plus, the girls’ books — the adventures of girls in Malory Towers and St. Claires by Enid Blyton. I read all of them. Late night birthday parties in the hostel — breaking the rules. Jumping the school wall to have midnight picnics in the forest near a moonlit lake. Hiding under the blanket with a small torch, reading an ‘adult’ book, perhaps, while the warden did the rounds.

Breaking rules is always heady. With tact and intelligence. And the responsibility of freedom. Break the rules, I say, but with a sense of wisdom and rationality. Doubt all power establishments made with stupid rules, doubt everything, but protect yourself and your friends. Enjoy with absolute joy, but don’t drown in it.

Then, of course, Champak, Chandamama, Paraag and Nandan — they were like a treasure of fantasies discovered with the nocturnal discoveries of Betaal and Vikramaditya. Comics. Flash Gorden. Strong, tall Phantom, with his overcoat’s collars up, the Ghost who Walks with that handsome, superbly intelligent, German Shephard dog — Devil. And beautiful, independent, intelligent Diana who worked at the UN, his girlfriend.

The stupid hypnotism of Mandrake — turning a revolver into a banana! — with a dumb Narda, always in a bikini, with or without a swimming pool, and Hojo, the chef, actually the Interpol chief. Such innocent pleasures!

There were dirty books too — those compulsively sold in seedy UP roadways bus stops. Manohar Kahania, Satya Katha, with grotesque, provocative titles. We had nothing to do with this titillating banality — despite the forbidden curiosity.

No Tiktok, Snapchat etc, to divert our attention, we would play all kinds of indoor and outdoor games, even Stapu, with the girls. Chess, table tennis, badminton, hockey, football, basket ball, gulli danda, pitthu, snakes & ladders, carrom board.

Those days the Chinese had nothing to do fast producing consumer goods (FMCG), which have flooded the world market, with or without ‘Trump tariffs’. We would crush glass and make assorted pastes, and create a deadly maanjha for our kites, some with long tails costing one paisa, and fly them on our terraces.

Our deadly maanjha most often would be of no use, because we lacked skills. The finest patangbaaj in the mohalla would snap it with one fast gota — a fighter-jet like spiral downwards in superfast motion, followed by rapid upswing of his kite — several such kites would thereby be instantly martyred. Then, the race for the falling kites, as trophies, across muddy mountains, slushy gutters of dirty water, our knees and elbows bloody.

Then cricket, all day, from the first flush of dawn till the darkness of the evening. With a dilapidated bat, shattered pads, ancient stumps, and a tired cork ball. A reasonably good all-rounder who had no fear of the fast bowlers, and a damn good close-in fielder, I was invited by older boys to play for their teams all over the town.  I loved the railway ground the most, with kids, all wearing similar cut-piece shorts and shirts, would watch us play.

In our higher secondary school farewell, our juniors made a lovely little card with these lines: Rain rain go away, little Amit wants to play, cricket, cricket, all day….

I preserved this lovely gift for years — and it might still be hiding somewhere in my old books as a book mark. The most precious gifts of life, indeed, are as simple as this.

It’s only that I don’t play cricket any more. I live. One day at a time.

Celebrating the nostalgia of yet another scorching summer. Like Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’. With all the secret yearnings of adolescence, without the hormones going berserk.

Remembrance of things future. Nostalgia as fast-forward.