Summer Woes

Summer is just chand dino ka mehmaan now, and I can't say how relieved I feel at the thought.
I know I have mentioned my love of rain sometime ago on the blog. But don’t be surprised if you see me cribbing about the gloomy rainy days, the muddy puddles on the roads and the horror of the clothes taking forever to dry. But right now I'm eagerly counting days for Mriga Pravesh and the poetic kaale-kaale badal.

This is my fourth summer in Hyderabad, and every year the city has kept up its promise of climbing up the temperature scale. Highderabad. Every morning when I get ready for office any onlooker will mistake me to be Phoolan Devi with my face veiled in a scarf. I raise the non-tainted windows of the non-AC cab and feel just like a potato being baked in the oven. I choose to sit sweat-drenched in the cab rather than get scorched by the hot air that rushes in through the windows. Life is all about choosing between the lesser of the evil you see. So, by the time I reach office I am so ready to die-I mean crash that it's sheer perseverance and determination on part of the people who make me work the full 8 hours or so. With no volition of mine. (Thankfully, this I-will-die-in-this-heat-syndrome lasts only 2 months.)

My harsh views about summer only mellow with the sight of the pretty kairi (raw mango) and the bounty of summer fruits and the sweet childhood memories associated with summer vacations.
I take my time and test others' patience in choosing between kairi chutney or kairi rice, kairi panhe or kokam sherbet. And reflect philosophically… Life is also about choosing the greater good, isn’t it? ;-)