Summer

Summer in India means the months of May, June, July and sometimes even August. When I was in school in India, we had summer break or summer vacations as we call it, and almost everybody went to their native villages. It is usually a periodic escape from the urban atmosphere for families, towards gathering as a large family in one's own native village. Usually during such gatherings, family members herded cattle, worked on their farmlands, played games in the evenings, had all their meals together, and slept on bedsheets under an open sky on the terrace at night. Waking up to the sweet smell of ripe mangoes early in the morning and trying to beat your cousins in mango-eating competitions surely made core memories. 

On returning to school after summer break, I would get to hear all sorts of such memorable moments from my friends who visited their nani-ghar (maternal grandmother's house) or dadi-ghar (paternal grandmother's house). I was born and brought up in the city. So were my parents and so were their parents. All my great-grandparents, moved in the early 1900s from Dhaka and Borisal in what is now Bangladesh, to Jamshedpur to work in the newly opened Tata iron and steel factory. They had a native place to go back and forth from the city while working and living in Tatanagar (or Jamshedpur; both names after the founders of this industrial small town), but that was only till India was declared to be independent from the British in 1947. Bloodshed followed the erasure of any family staying in Bangladesh, and prevented my grandparents from ever knowing what a native place felt, looked, or smelt like. I just have realized the fact that I know more about the English royal family than about my own family, and it makes me sad. I also would like to stand on the land, eat mangoes from my own mango tree, and know what having a big family with cousins feels like. I might just be reminiscing and wondering what could have been, and I realize that I am incredibly fortunate to have hardworking and supportive parents without whom I could not come as far as I have, and could not shake off all the negativity that one can associate sometimes with the ne'er-do-well cousins and uncles and aunts. Sitting thousands of miles away from my small nuclear family, I read gossip about the English royalty, wait excitedly to watch a fictional series based on English royalty and hangers on, and at the same time wish that I knew where the land was where the now extinct branch of my family walked upon. 

-Sush

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