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!!!