The Lost Summer

Yesterday as I walked down the road, in the middle of a scorching afternoon….I saw a bunch of kids riding bicycle past me. In fact bunch is an understatement. It was a herd of kids. It kept me guessing that why the heck were so many of them out on the road, that too on such a hot patch of the day.
My contemplation over this fact lead me to a realization that, It was not just a 38 degree centigrade day but a summer day. A day in the middle of a vacation. A day in the middle of a lazy stretch of time between two schooling years. A day clustered amongst many of it’s brethren termed as a holidays, some lost and some yet to loose.
As I walked on, I chewed over the event with the teeth of my thoughts. The kids on their bicycles formed a film on my retina and moved in the light of my memory before my eyes whenever I closed them during rest of the day. And maybe still.
The dust blown by the rubber tyres of their bicycles stretched in a cloud over my crammed full brain with the botherations, plans, plots, desires, ideas and every such thing that could gather in it. And in the cover of a thought I am spending the lingering moments.
When was the last time I rode a bicycle in the middle of the day, in scorching heat with my friends……
And along with it came a stream of questions from the seal packed box of my childhood memories.
When was the last time I rode a bicycle in the middle of the day, in scorching heat with my friends……
When was the last time I flied a kite in open sky to challenge a few others in that same blue.
When was the last time I tried to hit a ball that tossed towards me, to send it beyond the boundary, missing it several times before finally hitting it actually and sending it into the fielders hands.
When was the last time I caught tadpoles in polythene bags from the gutter beside the street…….
When was the last time I dragged the juice out of an ice ball dipped in a combination of varied flavoured colours…..
When was the last time I squeezed the sweet yellow paste out of a mango instead of cutting it into tailored pieces of sophistication.
When was the last time fed a stray dog and expected him to shake hand with me…
When was the last time I let a chameleon in the compound smoke a left over beedi of the watchman to see him go crazy…..
When was the last time I discussed ghosts after dinner sitting on the compound wall and felt the waves of fear running through me as I climbed steps to my house……
When was the last time sowed a die cast metal car in the garden to grow a tree laden with them…..
When was the last time brought things mother asked me too from the nearby general stores a thousand times in a day and boasted to father about it at night at the dinner table…..
When was the last time I pestered my sister stealing her toys…..
When was the last time I pestered my poor little mother for a chilled glass of nimbu paani after returning home from a so called cricket match in the supervision of afternoon sun…..
When was the last time I heard a story from my grandparents…..
When was the last time I stayed at my native place for a month, made friends there and went swimming in the river, searched for fallen mangoes and caught fish sitting in their fathers’ dinghies……
When was the last time I was scolded for being home late from play…..
When was the last time I suffered hypertension when my wrist watch showed seven….
When was the last time I missed the vacations on the day before the school…..
When was the last time I did many more things than I remember now in that small interlude….
I go down tracing the time when I did it the last……and I am not able to find out when…..
In the years that followed, I have lost my summer…..



(Maybe this is my nostalgia…pardon me for it……but I long for the time of freedom and pure joy…..which I have lost…. as I kept running further.)