Summer is here. Brings me the childhood memories of summer days. The arrival of summer used to be exciting because we could have ice creams. Some special ice cream parlours would function only during the summer time. One I remember is “Dollops”. And then, the classes would be coming to an end. We would have exams by around February end or March. And I would be so excited for the summer holidays.
Summer holidays were great because it marked the end of the academic year and no homework would be given to us during the vacation. Dasara holidays would be around October time and that would mark the mid term exams. Teachers would give some home work. Mainly writing mathematical multiplication tables and handwriting books and some other writing work. Summer holidays didn’t have any of these homeworks.
I remember one summer noon when the last exam got over. And I walked on the road. Little sunny, but we had some trees. Gulmohar trees were filled with red flowers. We could use the same flowers to play some games. Like the outer covering used to be sticky and we could use them to stick to our fingers, as if we had grown extra nails. And the inside parts could be used to play further. Summers also marked the dropping of certain type of sticky seeds from the raintrees (known as writer mara in Kannada) and we would smash them and try making “cork ball” without being aware that cork balls were made up of real cork material.
Summer would also mean, little bit of travel to some places. Visit to relatives’ houses. Some relative aunts who would be liberal and all kids would be at that one relative’s house and have fun. All good memories of in the summer are with cousins being together during summer holidays. We could get movies on VHS cassettes and watch one movie every day. Evenings, we could go out and play.
