This is some summer!!! I always hate summer but this is ultimate!!! It is just the start of April and already the mercury is touching 40. It is simply unbearable!!! Totally unbearable!!! and whats more we still have another month of summer left. This is the global warming Al Gore kept crooning about.

In Mumbai it is either summer or monsoon!!! This city has no WINTER, my favorite season. Summers at home in Pune were pleasant. When I was a kid we had spring up until March end (we wore sweaters till March) and the summer just started in the month of April……. also final exams!!! In summers we used to have lots and lots of lassis and lemonades and aam pannas.

I cant take heat. I get burnt so bad you would think I was some kind of firang but thats the way I was since I was a kid. Every time during the exams I used to have atleast one episode of epistaxis. I remember in my board exams during my french paper I started bleeding and the blood was all over my paper. I did manage to have it under control and completed my paper quickly before things got worse. Well I got very good marks…….. much much above average in French….. I would like to think the examiner felt sad for me seeing all that blood and gave me the marks…… kidding !!!

Summer holidays in Pune were mostly spent indoors playing scrabble…….. the love of my life, ludo, snake and ladders, monopoly, and painting and embroidery. This weekend too we did just that. Since we at home we played monopoly……. the game lasted full four hours and in the end I beat hubs fully and totally. I always beat hubs in scrabble so much that he has stopped playing the game with me. Actually I am quite a champ in scrabble. So the option was monopoly or chess. Chess is Hubs strong point so we opted neutrally to play monopoly. Hubs did not know this but I have never lost in monopoly either ever. In scrabble ofcourse I am some thing of a star of the family and usually beat hubs 400 to 100 very easily and since childhood he has always won in monopoly so he thought it was a safe bet…….. didnt work though!!!

When we grew up the heat in Pune was getting worse. We wore scarves that covered all of our face and goggles and gloves and socks and suncoats. In short we were totally covered from heat to toe. The heat is so bad there now that you simply get burnt within some time and since Pune has a dry climate you dont sweat there…… but unlike Mumbai you still have winter there. Who knows what will happen in the future!!!

Even today when it comes to making chappatis in the summer……… I go mad because of the heat!!! Most people who know me stay away from me at that time. Once soon after our marriage Rajdeep had said something about me not making chappatis but working on the theory of relativity. Man…… he had it that day…… not to mention all through summer rice was the only thing he got to eat!!!

When I shifted to Mumbai I just could not adjust to the sweating and humid climate. For one I hated sweating and my hair would just go haywire. I used to take a bath almost five times a day in the summer……. still wouldnt feel clean. You have no idea to the stuff I have done to make the water cool. I once even used the cold water from the fridge to cool the tank water which became hot.

In one of my summer holidays in Kolkatta when we had storms and rains in the summer. It was fun !!! I and my cousin (sister) started to sing all the rain songs we knew like “tupur tapur bhristi pore” “Aay brishti jhepe dhaan debo mepe” and we were joined by my mom and sisters and aunts and other cousins and even my dour faced uncles (who always had better things to do…… like dig something). It was so much fun!!!

In another instance when I was in college and we were returning from college…… we were in the 4:50 local and it was very very hot that day and we were all tired and irritable and at that time one guy in our group started the song “Rim Zhim gire saawan”……… I think everybody in the compartment joined it either listening or humming along !!! It was heaven. I think everybody who alighted from the train that day was smiling or atleast the heat didnt bother them.

I read somewhere that when you cant bear a particular situation you must think of what you want at that very moment and you will feel better…………. I cant take this heat so at this moment I am imagining rain and the smell of damp earth and the pitter patter of the rain drops and kishore crooning to “Rim Zhim gire saawan sulag sulag jaye man bhige aaj is mausam me lagi kaisi ye lagan” or suresh wadkar’s “Lagi aaj sawan ki phir woh jhadi hai” or “Megha re megha re mat pardes ja re aaj tu prem ka sandesh barasa re”.

We all have read stories of Tansen singing Megh Malhar or Miya Malhar and then suddenly there being rains. I have sung both the raags but alas no rain!!! maybe I am not good or maybe the rains dont like my voice……. but I have to specify……. gramatically I was perfect. I did not use even one wrong note anywhere…. whatever the reason, it did not rain.I think of all us who have ever learnt the aforementioned raagas and have heard the stories definitely have tried it….. but it never ever worked for any of us……. but music does appease your soul. Maybe Tansen just sang it a different way or something. If in those days there was provision for recording then we could all have recorded Tansen and played his rendition of Megh malhar when we wanted rains!!!

We may not have Tansen but we have recordings of Kishore’s songs. I am already feeling better………… the magic of music!!!