The Sights and Sounds of Summer
Saniya Rohida
For as long as I can remember, I’ve grappled with an undiagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder and my life would not be a perfect tragicomedy if the abbreviation was anything but SAD. I’m a sunshine girl, coming alive only when the temperature is above 30 degrees and the sun sets at least after 6:45 PM. It helps being from a city that is warm most months of the year. The sound of box ACs kicking in or desert coolers whirring away, while the kids napped because their mothers didn’t want them playing outside in the summer loo. I have written and will write several reveries, odes and tributes to summertime. To call her Other would be injustice. Summer, I believe, is my Proustian second self; it’s when I am happiest and truest. *** When the dry summer wind makes the windows rattle, The knob on the desert cooler is turned up a notch. Birdsongs start earlier and nights pass unclothed, Late May afternoons are spent freezing Rooh Afza Sticky hands share melting joy. As Maa naps for two hours, Sunshine falls like diamond dust On cool pavements, through rosy sunsets And tangled sheets, The child of summer, Awake and out to play. Conversations run astray, When ladies stay out late In boxy verandahs with necks craning And honesty without albatrosses, Early birds turned to night owls. Skinny arms poke through muscle shirts, Jumping gates, trespassing untrodden grounds, Unbridled creeks for unquenchable thirsts. 3 Chaicopy | Vol. III | Issue I
