The good old summer days

As summer approaches I am lost in the sweet nostalgia of the good old childhood days.
The ending of February and beginning of March is usually one of my favorite times of the year, when its neither too hot nor too cold. The time when the trees start shedding their old leaves, as they get ready to deck themselves with a shiny, fresh, new leafy coat. And the old leaves drift down from their lofty post in ones and twos (sometimes in a shower) in the summer breeze, to make way for the new G-gen (Green-generation of leaves :D )
The love for this season is probably linked somewhere deep-down to the summer vacation of the school days and the freedom of having finished the annual exams. The summer vacations were more enjoyable than the winter cuz of two main reasons- one, they would be twice as long as the winter vacations and two, there would be no holiday homework assigned then.
There are a few things about this season that I remember more vividly than the others. The fragrance emanating when the dry parched earth eagerly soaked up the water we sprinkled around the courtyards of our houses to keep the summer dust at bay and to induce a sense of coolness (the summer temperatures in my hometown range between 40-48 degree Celsius any given day) around the time the sun started setting.
Another extremely vivid memory is lazing in front of the TV watching CN (Cartoon Network) on hot afternoons as we would be forbidden to go out and play in the sun, lest we suffer a sun stroke (not that I never tried, sneaking out carefully making sure Mamma didn’t notice. And I have never had a sun-stroke, wonder why the adults didn’t understand that?? Oops, yeah!! They never knew I sneaked out, until now), all the while receiving a cold blast from the air-cooler. And the icing on the cake for this situation would be my mum’s yummy, delicious home-made custard-fruit salad, an extremely wholesome food (containing a mix of rich dry fruits, seasonal fruits and milk). I would shamelessly hog it like I have been starving for decades and usually end up skipping either breakfast/lunch/dinner for the greed of eating two or three servings of it. And not once did Mom complain that I ate like a glutton, she always made it with a smile (I wonder how!!! But then I guess that’s how most Moms are), not for a week or two but two whole months from April to beginning to June. Feast every single day :D
It was during these days that I discovered my love for reading when one day I tagged with my Dad to the local circulation library and picked out some comics (not to read, simply to look at the pictures. There you have it!! I never was interested in reading, it simply happened “by the way”). I always wondered why anyone on this earth (including Ma and Pa) would want to read some thick, fat, novel so bland in illustration when there were so many colorful books around(Exactly my thoughts then, but gimme some credit.. I was only 10 then)? As I soon was to discover, it was not the illustrations but the amazingly well woven plot that kept people glued to the novels. I slowly graduated to mystery novels like the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and P G Wodehouse. Little did I know that this ‘by the way’ hobby would soon turn into a love for books (which has only grown and never dissipated) thanks to Dad for introducing me to the proper kind of literature at the proper time, specially the serious plots as I entered High School. It has been an amazing learning process.
I should be thankful to the long walks I take in the afternoon around the office campus after lunch, because it was during one such walk that a solitary drifting dry leaf from its parent branch triggered this memory, which started as a small trickle and then transformed into a smooth flowing brooke, bringing along with it so many other forgotten memories.