Most of our summer vacations were spent at Grandma’s place. Ah! Good old summer, you’d expect. No. Even during that one and a half month of holidays, we weren’t spared by the fury of our beloved school teachers. An untoward amount of homework- filling up notebooks writing those mind-numbing essays, making charts, collecting flowers, getting some maps, completing the workbook and only the heavens know what not.
As a sign of resentment respect against the scourges of our dear school, homework was done only during the first and last few days of vacation. Every summer I’d go to school with incomplete notebooks as I knew my friends wouldn’t have done anything either. And together we’re primed to deal with all such terrestrial formalities. A ‘warm welcome’ would await us, as soon as the school reopened. After getting drummed out of the class, we’d be ordained to complete all the notebooks in the next 2-3 days. Right from the school Principal to the class teacher, it wasn’t uncommon that every now and then we managed to get on their wrong side, and enjoyed getting reprimanded from all of them.
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“Take tea for them”, Grandma would say in a fake-disgruntled tone. “Call me again when everything is tied to the Bicycle”, sitting in the next room I would also reply in an equally stingy manner.
Either granny or aunt would tie lassi, tea, some snacks etc., all in one bag to the bicycle. In my summer clothes, humming around happily on my bicycle, I’d reach the fields. After quenching my thirst with a glass of delicious lassi, I would dive into tubewell waters running nearby. With all my clothes completely drenched, I would get back on the bicycle and by the time I reached home, I would be completely dry again.
It was only after finishing my noon-time TV ritual of watching India’s favourite superhero Shaktimaan that I’d agree to take food for those working in the fields. Once again, everything would be tied to the bicycle. But 1 o’clock in the afternoon calls for an honest acknowledgment of the fact that there will be an acute exposure to extreme degrees of heat. Prophylactically, I would put a wet cloth over my head and set out for the little journey.
Going to the fields with Jamun tree (Black Plum) was my favourite part during the entire vacation. Outside ours, near to another village, swinging through the maze of muddy trails, hypnotised by the tunes of 44⁰C bright sunlight like a Cobra who has come out to bask, I would finally reach those fields. As soon as I would reach the place I’d take out the lunchbox and lay the bicycle in one of the trenches. Comforts of the thick shade of Jamun tree and hand-woven Traditional Indian bed were no way less than what you would experience in an expensive suite. Not caring about others, I would finish my own share of the lunch (Three cheers for my excellent manners since childhood!), plunge again in tubewell waters, sun-gaze and ramble carelessly through the fields, eat those nifty black fruits from the tree and finally- eluding myself from all the worries in the world, I would lie on that bed and experience something akin to moving through the stargate tunnel as portrayed in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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One of the workers in the fields taught me how to make an Indian flute out of a plastic pipe. I learned how to play some of his folk music in the coming few days. During those afternoons while playing the flute, doing a bit of homework and looking at those sun rays trying to peer through the dense canopy, I would enter a truly magical world. A place where time wasn’t a caged parrot, rather, it was an unrestricted eagle that uses the raging storm to lift itself above the clouds, away from the hustle of earthly matters. Unbothered, completely lost in the vividness of moment, I would lie there and not leave the fields until the dim orange glow on the horizon transitioned into a tranquilizing reddish-purple sunset.
Humming all the way back to our cattle-yard after a blissful day in the fields, finally, my 15 year old self would participate in some productive activity. After hand-milking 3-4 cows or buffaloes (Buffaloes are difficult to milk), I would go back home for dinner. Grandma’s homemade food and a little piece of jaggery as a dessert would just turn out to be perfect. Aunt would offer some dazingly delicious milk afterwards. Betaking myself to bed under the sleep inducing influence of that magical milk, I would sleep soon, striding slowly into a world full of pleasant dreams.
It would be the same routine every day for that one and a half month.
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The Unpatched Jackets 