Someday, today will be nostalgia

How would you know that summer had begun? One day you would come home from school and find mangoes on the table. Winter is the season of entropy. Trees greet you with their barrenness and the cold lulls you into a deep sleep, wherein you dream of running toward the everlasting embrace of summer. And the accompanying mangoes.Winter thaws into spring. The eyes slowly accustom themselves to the myriad colours that are sprung upon you. The chirpiness seeps from the air into your very soul. The birds sing songs that resonate with the lightness of being. Before you can grasp it, hold it, feel it and touch it with all your senses, spring slips out of your hands. It's almost closing time at school. The summer holidays are within reach. But the final exams stand between you and the promised land. And mangoes. In those few days you try to find god. In classrooms, heavy with the air of uncertainty, the whir of the fans and the flipping of papers are the only respite from th...

He was like any other grandson who took his grandparents for granted and assumed that they would live forever. And when all that was left of them were photographs, fading memories and death anniversaries, he realized what he had lost. He never knew his father’s father, who died long before his parents probably even met. His widowed grandmother then focused all of her energies on her doting grandchildren. It never struck him as remarkable, how hard life was in those days, when his grandmother had 5 children in 7 years and travelled from Lahore to South India in train over a span of four days. Those were the days when trains didn’t have air conditioning, sleepers, cushions and pantry cars and when one prepared food for a long journey.  She regaled him with all those tales of struggle but he only half listened, impatient as usual to finish his food and trudge back into his cocoon. She would tell him stories of how in those days women woke up at an unearthly hour to cook for ...