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!!!