Those fantastic summers

Come summer, my thoughts go back to my teens — the serene 60s, truly a halcyon era, in the port town of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu.

Every season has its own charm, bringing with it its special smells, sights and sounds. Every season offers enough to relish and remember and makes one long for it afterwards. And summer is no exception, though most may find the heat oppressive.

I can hear, even now, the kaaaaa of the solitary crow in the backyard, knifing the stillness of a soporific afternoon as the entire home enjoyed a siesta.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER FLAVOUR

If heat is abhorred and sought to be avoided by many, rich compensation is at hand. There is a host of summer delights, the delicious mango, sweet jack fruit, tender coconut water, cool palm fruit, delightfully named ‘ice apple’ by the British colonialists, Nongu in native Tamil.

Even today, decades after I left Tamil Nadu for Bombay and Delhi to pursue a career in the ‘ink street’, I can feel the summer pre-dawn winds, see the swaying of the palm trees and hear the music of the swinging palm leaves as strong winds gush through them. Drinking the cool pathaneer (juice extracted from palm) before the sun’s first rays appeared was a heavenly treat.

As the day advanced, one relished and savoured the smooth, if slippery, panai nongu under a hot sun. The evenings brought the romantic fragrance of jasmines from crowded streets and temples. Wherever you turned, every other girl wore white balls of the enchanting flower that held you in a spell.

Schools were closed. Cousins from other towns visited you and you returned the visits. A cool river bath removed dirt and overnight heat alike. Summer breakfast was rice soaked in water overnight and taken with salted buttermilk and mavadu (pickled tender mango) that left the tummy light and cool and kept you energetic till lunch.

Play games ranged from pamparam (top), goli (marbles) to indoor delights like countless rounds of Rummy, a long game of dice and snakes and ladders. When you were out in the sun on a cricket field, not a soul back home worried about you and called you on the ‘mobile’!

Innocence of sport

Another priceless delight was the company of books. One had long hours to enjoy old classics. The customary diet consisted of Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, Walter Scott, Jane Austen and others for the classically inclined, Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes for lovers of crime thrillers, P.G. Wodehouse for the humour loving and Somerset Maugham for those interested in exploring human emotions.

The summer months coincided with the cricket and tennis seasons in England — the full five Test-series and Wimbledon. The first Test always started on the first Thursday of June. The English never compromised on this tradition for a very long time. After the first three days, Sunday would be the ‘Rest Day’.

Till the early 1960s, the touring team would come to England by ship, romantically called ‘The Boat’. The mind’s eye pictures Richie Benaud’s 1961 Australian team posing from the deck of the ship on arrival at the English port to begin the Ashes tour. There were the greats, Neil Harvey and Norman O’Neil. Harvey and Benaud shared the rare distinction of being in Don Bradman’s legendary 1948 invincible team.

Cricket was still the gentleman’s game, free from commerce and big money sponsorship. There was no television in India. There was the good old radio and ball-by-ball commentary came from BBC, often relayed by Radio Ceylon. It was a pleasure and education to listen to John Arlott, Brian Johnston, E.W. Swanton, Alan McGilvray, Trevor Bailey and Lindsey Hassett, the last two expert commentators.

The following morning one would read the details of the day’s play by Jack Fingleton and Norman Yardley, who brought out vivid word-pictures of what had happened on the ground.

Sadly, today some of the precious summer delights have disappeared. Particularly missing is the peaceful ambience and a sense of unadulterated gratification. Terrorism, scams, rapes and the fall of cricket from a gentleman's game to the hands of betting crooks, sadly involving players themselves, all cast a long shadow on the summer joys.

I particularly grieve the death of cricket as one knew it in the 1960s, epitomised by a book on the West Indies tour of England in 1963 – Cricket, Lovely Cricket by the late Ian Wooldridge, sports writer of Daily Mail of London. How the game has changed in half a century!

The great game seems to be on an inexorable descent into ‘Cricket, Ugly Cricket’.

(The writer, a former deputy editor with PTI, is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist.)

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