Summer Blues

the cashew carrier

It is difficult to respond to a long spell of tropical summer with anticipation or with memorable fondness. Clammy, humid, clinging and breathlessly hot, it ushers in an oppressive lusciousness and fructification. Neem, mango, cashew, rose apple, kumquat, all flowering and fruiting trees conspire to blossom, bear, and mature at once. A life of ontogeny and everything it encompasses such as fruit-flies, caterpillars, termite over-rush, and scorpion ants is not something we romanticize; we deal with it. As we do with the incessant two-note song of the koïl, sweet yet monotonous in its execution.

Through the endless summers  dappled with our prayers for rains, for respite from heat and dust, peacocks strut down the winding path trumpeting, sounding and beckoning the clouds...I sense their yearnings. 

Every few hours I haul myself to the yard to pick up the fallen cashew fruits, soft and swollen with juice. Sometimes only a spatter of overripe fleshiness is found, its fibrous stringiness holding steadfastly onto the curvaceous seed smeared in warm nectar. 

On our walks, neem blossoms croon and call,  loose white bunches of them, hanging like pale waterfalls. Mumsy urges me to pluck some: "I will prepare a delicious dish with them to go with rice", excitement rings clear in her voice. I jump as high as the weight of the humid air, and my own would allow and grab some.  Further up the road, some fallen mangoes too are shoved into our bags already heavy with foraged goodies. Mumsy is heady with such an extravaganza. Has some of her in-built harvesting and foraging acumen trickled down to me as well through genealogical channels...? "That's all our childhood was," nostalgia lingers in her aging eyes. She often ventures out to describe the long walks she and her brother used to undertake from their home to the fields and all the delectables they collected along the way. Her 81-year old body has not an ounce of indolence and the sight of edibles growing in our immediate wilderness pleases her immensely. It matches her idea of heaven. 

A thrush has built a cosy little nest on a short rickety tree in the garden. It holds two off-white freckled eggs. Resultantly, Maya, the black cat has taken a liking to the whole idea of having a clutch up there and I often find her rubbing her back against its lean trunk. Maybe this is her idea of heaven.

Mumsy 's kitchen is spinning with conflicting aromas, all jostling to be tested, tasted, brought to justice. Her kitchen becomes at once a laboratory and a witch's den, where she carries out an array of experiments and numinous magic. Rose apple is teamed up with mint, ginger and honey to produce a delicious chutney. A dash of hibiscus syrup is added to the oozing succulence of cashew fruits. Raw mangoes are chopped and infused with rock salt, mustard oil and a five-spice blend and left in the sun to be pickled over time. 

I am dizzy with heat, with this constant birthing and dying, growing and decaying. The cloying sweetness hangs heavy in the air, intoxicating and encumbering.  Body complains, desiring nothing but rest. Ears spit out the plip-plopping of falling fruits, each thud like a mini explosion. The nest lies empty and clean. I would like to believe the chicks have flown away. But, I can't be sure. Even the eggshells are amiss. 

plop plop they fall

sliding over and 

through the host of 

murmurous leaves,

yellow like the sunny

summer days are

these cashew fruits

rancid juices flow

freely, smudge the

dusty earth, heat

and humidity trickle 

down in rivulets.

hands stained, with

greed and repulsion 

clamp down on this

overripe squishiness

and so many flies

a quiet presence

watches the action

pitying the bridled

human existence..

eyes look up from

the littered ground

voice finds a way to 

greet: "hi" it says, 

surprise abuzz in

its breathlessness

"meow" she answers