That was the last day of our seventh class exams. Social Studies. I filled up the bit-paper in 10 min. I was overwhelmed with joy. I felt like screaming and jumping in the examination hall. I don’t know whether it was because the tensioned exam days were over or it was because of the coming most-awaited-summer-holidays. Then one of the teachers came and leaked the bit paper answers (I think this is why they have aborted the seventh class public exams, now). I realized that I had made two mistakes in the bit paper. But who cares? I wanted to get away from that place and run screaming "I love Summer". It was very hard for me to sit and wait in that 15 min. I don’t know Einstein’s theory of relativity then, otherwise I would have known why that 15 min seemed so long. And then the bell rang and I came out running and got into the school bus. Most of the faces are glowing just like the sun in the summer. I tore some pages from my notebook and then the bus started. We made those papers into small pieces and flied them onto the road outside. We don’t know what we are doing. Only thing we have in our mind is "We are going back! Going home! Summer holidays!!!” The bus reached our school. My dad was waiting there. I rushed like a rocket and hugged him. Within two hours, we were in my village.
Next day. I woke early in the morning at 5:00 pm. It was a beautiful morning with those chirping sounds of birds. I thought "How beautiful it is in this village environment?” I got ready quickly. I went to the kitchen and asked my mom
"What is the Tiffin?”
"Dosa"
"I am bored of eating dosa's and idlies. Gimme some mangoes ma!!!"
I ate 5 big mangoes happily. My mom was screaming behind me "It is not good for health to eat that many mangoes at once".
My dad chuckled and said "Let my son eat whatever he wants".
I asked "Are you going to the farm? I will also come with you".
My mom quickly responded "NO! NO! Don’t go into the sun. It will affect you. You will get sun stroke".
I looked at my father, he smiled and then we (me, my father and two of my cousins) started walking to our farm. It’s about 4-5 Kms. We were very much excited. It seemed that those fields, those ducks in the water, those cranes waiting for fishes, everything and everyone was excited about the summer. We went to our fields, played in that bore water till we were exhausted and then took rest in that dry grass and came back with the same excitement and enthusiasm. We had a sumptuous lunch with the fishes from our village's local pond. It was so tasty that you could never forget that taste in your life.
In the afternoon, mom ordered strictly not to go out. I waited carefully till everyone was sleeping. And then I moved out on tip-toe, like a cat, without making any noise. I met my old friends and we quickly divided ourselves into two teams and started playing the much famous one-tappa-gully-cricket. I still remember all those curses and scolding we got from our neighbors. When we were completely wet with sweat we stopped the game, we sat there and talked about the latest WWF matches and the cricket matches. We collected our pocket money and bought the ice fruit from the street hawkers and ate it as if it was amrutham. (My mom specially warned me while giving the money, not to eat those ice fruits). And then I went back home completely exhausted. My mom started to scold me but became soft, took me and gave a clean bath. I intentionally took a light dinner and then ate a lot of thati-munjalu with all excitement. We lied down on the top of our house. Counting those stars, watching the full moon, hearing the bed time stories of my grandfather, I slept.
25th April 2008:
Now, I wake up at 7:00 am. There is no excitement in life. There are no exams now. We only have software releases now. We don’t like summer now. Infact we hate summer now (For that matter, we hate rainy season and winter season also). We are now addicts of A/C and internet. We just sit in this small cubicle with A/C all the time to avoid the sun. Whenever we want to talk to people, we ping them on IM or some messenger, even though the person is in next cubicle. We write scraps in orkut. Whenever we want to express opinions, we don’t meet, we just write blogs and distribute (just like this one). We don’t need anyone's help, we don’t follow our friend's instructions but we just follow those googled search results. If internet is down then everything is down. Life will be upside down.
Whenever we go out we apply all kinds of sunscreen lotions and moisturizers to avoid the sun. We go to A/C Gym’s to do our regular exercises. We go to A/C restaurant to eat some costly-tasteless-fish-curry. We don’t sleep in the open air environments anymore. We live in air-tight rooms with split A/C's. We don't eat mangoes anymore we just drink fresh mango juice or canned mango juice. We don't play in water anymore. Infact, we hate any water that is flowing outside (and also we never care to complaint about such things. We just hate). We hate ice fruits and thati-munjalu now. We just taste ice creams in A/C restaurants.
Even now, our parents, uncles are going still going out to their usual works in the same sun. Only we, software engineers, have changed. All those beautiful summer holidays are crap now. Only thing that is important now is Career. We are just bloody professionals now.
P.S:- This blog is dedicated to the person who inspired me to write this.
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