The storm clouds from Tauktae have not receded here yet, and another one begins elsewhere. The cyclones and storms of Bay of Bengal are often more devastating than on the western coast. I hope Yaas doesn’t inflict much damage.
Tauktae brought the fiercest winds I have ever seen in Bombay. As the clouds gathered before noon and the wind hammered my windows, I got lost in a memory:
That summer evening, at our quarters in Vile Parle, the skies were typical Bombay blue when we began playing. A while later, batting in front of our makeshift stumps Satheesh looked up behind all of us and said, “today looks cloudy, no?”
As soon as Satheesh uttered these words, Deepak began running towards me, I could hear him though my back was to him. Karthic began running towards Satheesh, who began running to the building. I didn’t need to turn to see what had happened. Bloody Satheesh had brought the rain upon us.
Writing from a sunny Bombay, away from that Parla east evening by about a quarter of century, I am Maneesh. And this is Bombay Daak.
I will remember this May as the one where I found that an ‘Indian summer’ has nothing to do with India. Many poetic possibilities are now relieved of their duty with that.
Often, when the well of my poetic sensibilities dry up, I pick up Jeet Thayil’s English, and I did yesterday. And in it I read:
Summer
Colour the horned snail
red for the fire that begets it, keep it
safe from the sun that robs it,
colour its home white on white
(make it rich enough to fill in
for the absence of shade trees,
conversation, or hope for comfort),
fold the light above it, and stand
beside your emissaries,
the Saguaro, the Joshua, the sea
without end, or pity, or water,
until something clicks inside us like light:
we are here to sing the permanent
cadence of sand; here I am, ready.
May evenings, growing up, were sparse evenings. The excitement of summer vacation would dwindle from the highs of April; most of the friends would have headed home to their native, leaving just a few sporadic ones to play with; TV switches on reluctantly, bored of its own monotony. The skies are sparse, gleaming roads empty in the heat, the trees withered and bare.
For many of us, last May was a trip back to childhood, vacation routine had set in. Books were devoured, shows were guiltlessly binged, all food cravings dispersed with. The storm this year and its dark pregnant clouds looming on a petrified city just about defined this summer - an overload of misery.
May Ziade story of surviving the Lebanese conflict is a numbing reminder of what Children go through in the Middle East’s never ending crisis. It is stunningly illustrated by Lucille Gauvain.
I enjoyed reading this interview with poet Raven Lailani. In fact the entire Stopping by With series over at Poetry Society was a relief this summer and great place to discover new names and things to read. This list of 8 new books from writers of the Indian diaspora is another.
This interview with architect Mikkel Frost where he runs us through his process is fascinating to watch.
Landed on this post on indexing and filing your journals by Austin Kleon on his newsletter.
And in mood of all this growing up nostalgia I intend to read this essay on growing up in a commune by Kathryn Jezer-Morton. I found it while reading Anne Peteresen Consider the Quasi-Commune, where she describes Jezer-Morton’s essay as ‘…about what collective inter-dependence could and should look like.’
Shivaji Park, Dadar: Placeholder of many summer afternoons
Summer was not a season as much as it was a shared experience. A two month window that was defined by who you spent it with. Cousins from my mother’s side, nieces or nephew’s from my father’s end, family friends, friends from school, or neighbours or as it was in one instance CRPF men in Jammu. And so years later, when they are no longer around, your memory of them are those summers: the summer of the Walkman, the summer of Kit-Kat and Coke, the summer of the first flight, the summer of Rummy, of GI Joes, Trump cards and Royal Rumble VHS, of funerals, weddings and rivers and beaches.