WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
We have no time to stand and stare?—
With school and college days well behind us and a long career ahead of us, these immortal lines by W.H.Davies are very much relevant during this phase of our life. So I decided to derive some nostalgic pleasure by recollecting some of those bygone days. There used to be a pocket of two months during school days when life took a dramatic U-turn - all play and no work. Its that time of that year when children think parents have no moral authority to decide what they should be doing. And it's a luxury you got only till the age of eighteen. Well, who can forget those sunny, carefree and fun-filled summer vacations....
There are many harbingers of these pleasant days. The mercury starts soaring mercilessly and juicy mangoes and rotund watermelons start populating the fruit stalls. With annual exams in full swing and summer holidays just around the corner, there is that familiar mix of apprehension and excitement gripping our hearts. Also school bags take an all new dimension and books give way to writing pads – which gets improvised into a cricket bat. And once the annual exams get over it's the start of a literal merry-go-round (As a ritual I used to throw my bag to a corner of the house after the last exam, metaphorising freedom from the clutches of studying).
As every summer set in, I used to promise myself long hours of sleep during the holidays. But somehow sleep never had a sense of occasion. When I was intently burning the midnight lamp, there it would arrive unannounced. But when I had all the time in the world to do nothing, it never yawned on me. Anyway with cousins who would come down for holidays and friends equally ready to relish the holidays, there were lot of other interesting things to do than sleep. We used to have a wide spectrum of games to chose from. Sometimes it was a game of hide 'n' seek with its myriad nomenclatures. Though simple in its conception it can easily make for a lot of fun-filled moments. The way we scrambled in search of a hideout turning every nook and corner of the house into one are still fresh in my memory. Some other times it was another of those time tested games. If we were indoors then it was one of those ingenious board games. And for those more in love with the cyber world than the real one, there were the computer games.
Though some of these games lost favor as we grew up, one game still remains close to our heart. With the streets turning into a boiling cauldron and moms yelling to get indoors, playing cricket was never going to be easy. But the love for the game that has become part of our genome code due to natural evolution ensured we spent long hours in the boiling sun. I still remember how we roamed our locality armed with bats and balls in search of another game of cricket. And as the sun was signing off for the day draping the sky in an orange splendor, we prolonged the plays as long as an iota of light was available.
Apart from playing, the leisurely mood of the summer holidays is a propitious time for catching up with novels. The vicarious pleasure derived by journeying into the fictitious worlds of "The Hardy Boys" or "Three Investigators" or our very own "Swami and his friends" is something every bibliophile will cherish for eternity. And no summers can be complete without paying a visit to our good old granny. Granny's place were always a breeding ground for fun 'n' frolic because it was a conclave of relatives and also we where away from the scrutinizing eyes of our dad. Hmm... How I wish I never grew up....
