Summer, part 2

Thinking about my 'queen hood' yesterday, i also realised how listening to the friends' and acquaintances' planned trips to home countries or elsewhere makes me feel. Every year, it is the same, and this year is no different. I love being in the relative peace and all here but when i see everyone leaving one by one, weekend after weekend, i recognise the yearning i feel. Suddenly, it feels it has been a long time since i saw the airport Departures! There is a nostalgia that fills me, a longing to be home, on the familiar terrace, the much travelled streets, the loved family, the missed gastronomic treats and so on and so forth. Again, suddenly, i want to go, right now; pool or no pool; traffic or no traffic; electricity or no electricity! No, the last one stops me, as does the daily news on various Indian news channels.

Electricity cuts and summer heat have a love-hate relationship back home. Love, because they do sometimes stay together, say, a few hours in a day; and hate because rest of the summer, you have to do without the electricity... The news channels start very positively on the monsoon's progression from Kerala, to Mumbai to the North. The initial showers are so pleasant that not one home celebrates their arrival without the customary tea-pakora or tea-samosa party! Even the News channels repeatedly show people enjoying themselves around India Gate, various gardens, soaking wet on their bikes, or just out with their picnic baskets. Oh so tempting....the fragrant earth as the raindrops fall on it, getting soaked in the rain (no water park can give you that feeling....), going for a long drive with windows down and music at full blast....a very typical welcome of Monsoon.

However,  within a matter of days, all the much looked forward to monsoon showers translate as floods, dengue, malaria, chikungunya, pot-holes, more electricity cuts and more flooding. You cannot walk on the streets without getting splattered with some of the muddy water, courtesy:  a passing car or scooter or bike. You can never be too careful about the food you eat out. And you can never  shoo enough the buzzing house flies, whose population suddenly seems to reach astronomic proportions after the rain.

Torn between the two worlds, the past reminders of children falling terribly sick in this season back home are magnetic enough for me to stay put...and enjoy my brief solitary rule! But for everyone else, happy holidays and safe journeys!!!

The Summer

I am preparing myself for the impending time ahead. A time when I will have weird feelings about my neighbourhood…similar to owning it all! Yes, i feel like a queen every July, (since the last two Julys, i.e.). I can sympathise when people don’t get it, but the reason is quite simple really.

Come June end, and people start leaving Dubai in droves. By week one of July, the whole community is practically a ghost town. All you can see is cars parked in the garages, getting baked in the sun and coated for free by the sand that caresses them. The pool is free the whole day, and we choose late evenings to venture out when the weather is at least bearable for one hour! I am sure the life guard does not like us in July though, because if it were not for us, he could have requested the Management to close the pool for the sweltering summer...I feel sorry for him, really.

The traffic is lesser on the roads, safer since there are lesser (and hence, lesser irate, careless) drivers on the road and it is a pleasure (for a change!) to cruise on Dubai roads. (By the way, even the doctors are not available, so you have got to be really careful and not fall sick in July-August in Dubai!) We have more visitors, thanks to Dubai Summer Surprises, but we know that they come here for shopping and will go back soon. The schools are closed, so we can take things easy, get up late, stay up late, plan the day, or do nothing at all...

Yes, July here is a more relaxed month than most people imagine. However, there is a downside of being a queen...loneliness. Most of the kids' friends are away and that makes me more vulnerable to banging my head on the wall in desperation. Yes, i become desperate trying to balance fun and edutainment for the kids. The summer camps all look the same- and i would hate to push the kids out of the house in the morning in holidays too!

I remember we used to make lots and lots of plans for our summer break, not realising that we had 'holidays' homework' too to take care of,  and ignorant of our parents’ plans for us. I always thought holidays were for fun, and nothing else, and it was quite contradictory to the wiser view that time was not to be wasted…translated as, ‘holidays are to learn something new!”. Now, a parent, I realise that too…and find it equally hard to motivate my kids to use their holiday time to practise Maths, learn Hindi, or a new skill, or simply, help me in the seemingly boring household chores. (The kilos I put on last summer learning and experimenting baking with kids, and then sampling our experiments are a constant reminder that I should not push them towards kitchen this year!)

The much anticipated break finishes so soon that when we look back; we ask ourselves, what did we do all summer? But then, holidays always seem to fly because good times pass faster, in our minds...Well, faster or slower, it is high time the schools close- it is nearing 50 degrees now...and i am looking forward to my tenure as a queen!!!

Trust

Trust. A small word, fragile, omnipresent, and opposite of betrayal.

When my health professional told me recently that i was over-medicated, and asked me the reason, I looked back at her blankly. Wasn't the answer obvious? I had done what my so-very-well-educated and experienced and recommended doctor had told me to do! I had trusted him. Just like the one before him and after him and this new health professional too. All in good faith!!

When the E.COLI started dominating the newspapers, the government announced that there are strict quality checks in place to ensure that the 'tainted' produce does not reach our shelves. I trust what is being told to me via the media.

When the supermarket promises 'home delivery', i trust they are using a proper vehicle so the milk I ordered does not get converted into cottage cheese (it is 47 degrees outside!) by the time it reaches my house!

I trust the life guard at the pool is trained enough to do his job well, if anyone at the pool ever needs it.

I trusted the developer when they sold their project as a gated community. I still trust the Community Security when they send their staff patrolling the streets on their bicycles.

I trust my neighbours will come to help if i ever needed it.

I trust the school i send my children to. I trust the bus driver and the conductor who accompany them in the school bus. And most of all, I trust the teachers with whom my children spend 7-8 hours daily.

I trust my children will remember their values when they are free birds.

I trust my family will always be my side.

I trust the friends i make along the way, albeit in stages, and a little gingerly in the beginning. I even trust my children’s friends, and their parents.

I trust the food i eat out is hygienic, fresh enough for human consumption and will not make me sick with food poisoning.

I trust the government, the people, the staff, the doctors, the teachers, the home delivery men, the neighbours, the airlines, the electrician, the plumber, the gardener, the supermarket, the hospital, the nursery, the courier company, the restaurant, the friends, the family, and above all, the power that runs this universe. I trust that they all will do the work that they are supposed to do in all earnestness and to the best of their abilities; and no more, no less.

Don't we all?

Does that make us gullible?

Or, does that only mean that majority of people on this earth believe in the goodness of life, and everything that runs it? The majority of us, commonly; generally; usually....trust; and all that we learn about not trusting anyone ever again, is what we call experience! So, if majority of us are the ‘good guys’, why do the ‘bad guys’ still manage to do their job?

Yours, Instantly...

I absolutely love the instant  reactions i get when i share my thoughts. When I started writing, i had no idea how wonderful it would be to see these reactions through comments, thumbs up (or, thumbs down), mails, smiles, and statistics! Right until now, when i experienced it myself, i would have thought it impossible! Yes, right until now, the earliest i could think of 'instant' was when instant noodles and instant coffee were introduced.

But now- now, everything has become instant. I need not wait for the post anymore, I just check my various inboxes; and that is a good thing because we don’t even have postmen delivering mail at our doorstep! (‘What???” - i know that is the reaction of most people when they come to know of it...but it is true!) I don’t have to beat the coffee anymore, and that is a huge convenience when i really feel like having one alone, or am travelling or when i just feel lazy...and now they have instant tea too! I haven’t tried it yet, but they claim it is as good as 'mom's'!

 I realise it is not only about convenience, it is also about speed, about impatience, and about saving time. I am impatient to know how my writing is received and perceived; i am thankful for the speed at which the statistics are uploaded, and believe me, it does take lesser time to entertain unannounced guests when you have one of those instant meal packages! I am sure they are not so healthy, but they are still better than a whole lot of other junk food that we end up eating when absolutely famished and in no mood/ with no energy to cook.

And yet, I still savour the excitement of sitting in the evening assembly and waiting for my name to be called out to receive my mail. Yes, in our time (I know, I know, it can look like Ancient History when i tell you that we had no mobile phones, but really, it wasn’t that long ago!!), there was nothing instant- everything took its own sweet time, ripened slowly, tasted sweeter, and was kept for savouring it again later! Mails were keepsakes, and could not be just left in a nondescript Inbox or a specifically named folder; the excitement at getting a mail, and the disappointment at not getting one were both intense emotions (really!!), receiving a phone call made your day because not many people took the trouble of spending on expensive STD calls, cards were carefully chosen and given and then treasured....was it all so idyllic as it seems now? I am not sure but what i am sure about is, growing up in those times, i didn’t mind it at all! Something as simple as coffee wasn’t that simple…'Beating' coffee was a skill and if you knew the right proportions, you could boast that you make good coffee, unlike the limited skill required today of opening a 3-in-1 pack and mixing it with hot water!

Come to think of it, having a mobile phone would have certainly been convenient though- it would have saved me waiting in cold January winter evenings near the warden's room!  The same goes for  instant noodles. They have definitely been a life saver. Whether it was (and still is!) travelling, hunger pangs in the hostel room, midnight snack attack, or just breaking a 'fast' at midnight...Maggi became a part of our lives like nothing else edible could. I do not know of one single person who has no memories associated with our good old Maggi! Now, how wonderful is that?

And yet, it was a time that I can look back and call ‘good old days’! (By the way, for the uninitiated, it also meant that your office could not get hold of you when you were holidaying!!!! Isn’t that great?? ) I did not know it then but obviously, it was also a time when the world was getting ready to become more spontaneous, more ‘instant’, more responsive. I am glad; I got a chance to enjoy that transition instead of just knowing the world at its fastest today.  I am  glad that my memories of those times also include a mango night in the hostel and umpteen such nights at home- feasting on real mangoes which were left to ripen on the trees and not subject to some chemicals to hasten their growth…

I cannot say that ‘instant’ is bad- it is not. It can be a real life saver in more cases than I know, but 'instant' takes away the pleasure of letting it brew... be it coffee, tea, any other beverage or simply, life.

Yours sincerely truly  forever  instantly,

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