Monday, May 14, 2012

Summer On My Blog

I think I am in a fairly poetic mood today. No, that does not mean I'm going to bore you with poetry, it just means I might 'wax eloquent'.

As I write this, I'm being slow cooked in the skin as foodie-talk goes, the mercury in Mumbai is tottering on high heels between 36 degrees and 39 degrees. The evenings are marginally pleasant-er at early thirties. What makes the heat obsessive is perhaps the humidity. But after living most of my life in coastal cities, I must admit, I'd rather be steamed to death than spit-roasted in a dry tandoor like the heat in Delhi or Pune does. Having lived in both the cities, I must say there were days when I craved some sweat to cool my burning skin down. I'm sure a few noses have already wrinkled in disgust at my ode to sweat-inducing humidity, so let's get to more pleasant things.

I have blogged a while ago about a word-association game that my English teacher taught us to play while at school. It was a way of teasing the imagination, creating Word Sketches, quite literally. So an emotion or a colour could be expressed in more tangible terms. Say for instance, Pleasure could be answered with The First Lick of Cotton Candy while Black could be the Gathering Thunder Clouds before a Storm. There were no right or wrong answers, just the race among kids desperate to impress the teacher by coming up with the best word-association.

Over the last month, I tried to play the game with myself. Not words, but pictures. Here is what I came up with...

The fiery red gulmohur tree bursting into flames as the sun mercilessly beats down on the earth. They remind of travelling by the Naval Base in Kochi, the line of trees along the edge of the backwaters marking the advent of blazing summers. For Malayalis, the flowering of the golden shower tree, or the Kani Konna is a symbol of summer and the advent of Vishu. The vishukani is incomplete without an abundant spray of the kanikonna, so much so that in those areas where Malayalis abound and kanikonna is a rare sight, the flowers are shipped by the kilo ahead of Vishu.


Summers are also the time for the juiciest of watermelons and muskmelons. I constantly thank the wonderful invention called the refrigerator that ensures a steady supply of cold water and iced teas. But more importantly, it keeps watermelon chilled cool. Dad often buys huge watermelons and lugs it home and Amma promptly cuts them, fills them into tall steel containers and shoves it to the coolest depths of the ice-box. By evening, we make massive inroads into these containers. Watermelons are tension-free fruits, unlike the sweet nectar like mangoes. Till last year, Dad's overt fondness for this summer fruit meant that he would buy them by the kilo at the price charged. This year, our mango tree has been yielding him Alfonsos, making all the love, care and little nothings that he has whispered to the mango tree to coax it to yield the sweetest mangoes.


Mangoes apart, the English summer is the time for Wimbledon...its also the time for strawberries and cream. Now while in England, you can neither crib about the pounds spent on buying strawberries to dunk in fattening double cream or the pounds that you gain eating them to commemmorate the warmth of the sun that peaks out longer after grey grey winters. Summers for me is also a tall jar of Pimms, mixed with lemons and oranges and bottles of tonic water. No one orders a Pimms by the glass, you order it by the jug. And no delicate sipping is allowed. You  have to compulsorily guzzle it down to sake the thirst.

Summers also spell barbeque by the beach, although barbecuing pork and beef sausages mean I'm usually stuck plucking off grilled peppers and mushrooms from the racks for myself. But even the sun-browned Indian skin craves the warm kisses of sunshine after acclimatising itself to the heat given off by the radiators to get rid off the chill that settles deep inside the bone.

Ooooh, talking of summers, ice creams should be the dessert to end this post on...Of all the ice creams that I have sampled from across the world, there is something to be said about the Turkish variety. They beat the cream in iced vats till the cream surrenders and pliantly lets itself be scooped. Each lick is creamy without any icicle to spoil the taste or texture. Someone whispered that the secret of a creamy Turkish icecream is the high quality goat's milk that is churned to make the ice cream. The chocolate flavours are not overtly sweet but cocoay, the vanilla oozes its flavour while a tangy lemon makes you squint  while a big gulp can give you a brain freeze...Sigh! Nothing like an ice cream to cool your inners down as your skin burns away in the summer sun. 
Now as you finish this post, I'm off to raid the fridge in the hope that there's still a bit of Naturals ice cream left behind! Have we spoken about Mumbai's very own Naturals? I guess we haven't! More on that soon!!!


20 comments:

  1. A mouth watering enticing post, Deepthy:) Grossly unfair to talk about food without eating some of these summer delights!

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    1. Were you in Mumbai, I'd have said Naturals Mango is the way to go!! :)

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  2. Aiyo those pictures are so amazing!

    Arey in our house, Appa buys the water melons, Appa cuts the water melons into small pieces so that Amma doesnt get any seeds and Appa keeps the watermelons in the fridge and gives it to Amma once she comes back from school.. ;)

    Naturals ka ice cream..I so want!

    Wait, I didnt realise you are in Mumbai..off to write an email to you!

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    1. Ms R ( R's mom) - Finally you crack it!! I have been trying to tell you so often that I am a Mumbaiwaasi too..Btw, I'm a closet photographer..all the pictures in the Life 365 are mine, unless otherwise stated..:) In fact, pictures and posts are meant to go hand-in-hand in this series...

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  3. what a lovely description...watermelons, Strawberries and Ice cream...sluuurp. All this talk of food and I am hungry :)

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    1. V: Softies on Fergusson college road..the next time Im in Pune, we must must do it...for nostalgia sake and as a summer treat..:D

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  4. Definitely eloquent.

    My flatmate and I have been guzzling dark rum watermelon cocktails this summer to stave off the heat!

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    1. Marita, lovely to see you back here, oooh talking about dark rum watermelon cocktails - have you tried layering a plastic dabba with nice bite-sized chunks of yummy watermelon and liberally pouring quarter of a bottle of Bacardi over it and leaving it in the fridge for atleast half a day. You couldn't be happier beavers, trust me...It's one of my favourite sister-in-law's all-time popular party offering...:)

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    2. Journomouse,

      I'm going to get myself a watermelon just to try out that trick! I'm already excited.
      It's always wonderful to read your posts. Been sharing this blog with some friends, especially when homesickness hits a little harder than usual.

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    3. Report back how you liked it..:) By the way, hang in there, my homesickness gets acute during monsoons...Btw, I hear this time, its been raining through summer in Kerala. My Amma is sighing in resignation at the thought of relentless rains through monsoons while I await it eagerly...:)

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  5. Jisha Kishore Kumar15 May 2012 at 18:47

    Woooow! What a yummmmmilicious post!!! In this heat and dust of UAE, reading your post is like getting drenched in a heavy downpour..!! Came across your blog recently...its so refreshing to read you...thank you so much!

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    1. Jisha, you just brightened my otherwise sweltering summer day..Welcome to my blog and I hope you enjoy it and we get to build a rapport. That's what I love most about blogging. Connecting with people from all over, who relate to your writing and are able to enrich it with their perspective and experiences..:)

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    2. Jisha Kishore Kumar16 May 2012 at 16:50

      Hi Deepthy, of course I relate to your writing and how! And who will not!! While envying your style, I remember how I used to write in the college magazines etc – needless to say I was never able to put it down the way you do..!! but still…..and now I think I have lost the sensibility towards the same – the problem Coleridge too faced once – too much of indulgence in philosophy and the realities of life has deprived me of my creative powers, if I had any.......:D:D:D

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    3. At the risk of sounding like a supremely experienced blogger(which I'm not), I must say keeping your blog as an online diary, which like my masthead says is one where there is no method to the madness. So its just a collection of random thoughts as happened at random times of my life..:) If you look at my posts, you will also notice an inconsistency, some posts flow better than others...that's because those that don't were written when I was feeling rusty and doubtful about writing...So shut your eye and start pounding it out on the keyboards...what takes shape, whatever does is your creation..good or bad, your baby...:) How's that for a pep talk to restart writing? :)

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    4. Jisha Kishore Kumar17 May 2012 at 00:39

      How nice it is to read you..you always use the apt words which go straight to the heart. Thanks a bunch for trying to stimulate my creative powers...that’s really so sweet of you…God Bless!

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  6. you couldn't have been more eloquent about the summer description.
    here in Indore I am so enjoying the beauty of 'gulmohur' and 'golden shower'. I am in love with these flowers and it makes scooter rides so soothing even on a hot afternoon .someday I am gonna break my leg watching high up and being smitten by the charm of these flowers.
    lemme lemme make a post about it.
    PS-did i tell you , you write sooooo lovely.

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    1. I'm glad you related to the gulmohurs and the golden showers. I was kind of feeling upset that in the yummy buzz created around the watermelons and the mangoes and ice creams, my gulmohurs got kind of waylaid..:) You must pen a post on it and should leave a link here, so that people in love with gulmohurs and summers like you and I can visit a related post too! :)

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  7. Although I am not a fan of summers, your post has got me to see the postitives of it :-) Also, strawberry and cream is putting me back to the times, when we visited Wimbledon. Seriously bliss!

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    1. I think Jenny, summers are fun only in cold countries or grey ones like England..In our part of the world, it is just the prelude to the monsoons..:) but then again we have only two seasons along the coast..;) When it is sunny and when its rainy...:D

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    2. couldn't agree more. But you know after a while the greyness of england bored me to death. I yearned for some sun there!!!!

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