Brown

My earliest memories of school, was hating it. I never wanted to go to school. The rains had set in and the light green paint on our old, two-storeyed house fell out in patches. Grime and moss would then gain a foothold, adding to the drabness of the place. My parents lived on the very top and I would trundle down the stairs to catch a ride to school. We had cement stairs with criss-cross patterns notched on to them with a trowel. I guess they were meant to lend some traction on those dull grey stairs, both to the foot and to the eye. One rainy day, I slipped on the top step and went sliding and rolling all the way down. Unfortunately, I was fine. The hefty school bag had taken the hit, and the water. My clothes were fine too. Back to school.
Vijayawada can be unbearable in the summer. A sharp uptick in intensity by mid-February, and the heat ratchets up. Soon, the walls start radiating heat in the evenings. River Krishna’s waters wrap the city in a humid haze, and venturing out in the afternoons is a death wish. Despite the heat, I would miss summer when it was gone. There was no school, and I could play, read, or do nothing — which was most of the summer. We lived in Governerpet, a big commercial development in the Eighties. Besant road, Vijayawada’s big shopping street in those days, was only a few lanes away. Shop-loads of people — patrons, shoppers, staff — would arrive on Besant road and promptly park their scooter or cycle in the middle of the road. So, parking in the middle with two narrow bands for walkers and moving two-wheelers to the left and right. Besant road glittered with rows upon rows of shops selling cloth and “fancy” items. One of its by-lanes sold killer nimmakai (lemon) soda in thick green bottles with marble stoppers. I have vague memories of “Modern cafe” and a bakery. I also loved going to Lakshmi general stores. My mother and aunts would flip through sarees, while I got to sip free cool drinks with a straw.
All shops selling an item would band together in one locality. Our neighbourhood was full of shops selling furniture, and of course, a couple of cinema halls. No kids though. My grandfather had a shop too, along with his medical practice, on the main thoroughfare, Eluru road. If you were on the pavement and needed to enter the shop, a helpful set of steps would lead you up to it, over the open drain. He would live with my grandmother on the first floor and we would live above them. My grandfather, an apothecary really, had a beautiful shop. It had high ceilings with wooden beams, old wood furniture and staff just as solid. It smelled of herbs and thick, home-brew medicine, and had a warren of rooms behind it. I loved playing with the typewriters in the office at the back, or dipping into my grandfather’s pan masala box while he scolded his patients. In time, we moved to Sitarampuram, further down Eluru road. A quieter neighbourhood, with wealthier houses slowly intruding and displacing older, poorer dwellings.
We grew up in a time when air conditioners were rare. We had a couple of incongruous air coolers belching wet, humid air into rooms suffused with moisture. The windows would be blanked out with bedsheets despite the suffocation — anything to keep the heat out. In those stifling summer afternoons, any movement in the still air was welcome. I would lie spread-eagled on the floor in only my underclothing, with the other cousins sprawled around. People smelled of perspiration or talcum powder, or — the horror — Jasmine. The streets would be lined with strong-smelling fruit and berries; I couldn’t stand them. My only solace was Sāribadi rasāyanam — Ayurvedic sherbet my family made — with some ice cubes thrown in for good measure.
Summers also saw scheduled power cuts. My favourites were the one or two hours in the night. People would sit down on the thresholds while the kids would run around the street in the darkness. We would play hide-and-seek, jumping from one roof-top to the other. Some of the buildings were all joined up, of course. The evenings were also a time for story-telling, memory games and more.
Vijayawada also had a beautiful old library and bookshop — Prabodha. An old mossy-brown stone building in a church property overrun by trees and wild grass. It was a wonderful place, when it rained, the place had the heady smell of old-books-and-paper. The place ensured me with a steady supply of Enid Blyton. I devoured the famous five, the five find-outers and dog and crucially, Malory Towers and St. Clare’s. Here was the kind of school I wanted to go to (never mind the gender)! A hostel was perhaps the answer to my school troubles… Actually, it was.
When I was older, my friends and I would find refuge in the many A/C cinema halls dotting Vijayawada. In fact, it never occurred to me ask why a smallish town would have so many! There are many books on Vijayawada’s enduring love for cinema. Surely, an escape from the summer heat played a big subconscious role in stoking this phenomenon.
Because of the intense heat, Vijayawada’s summers tend to overwhelm conversations about the place. My father has never tired of joking that the place has ten months of summer and two months of very hot summer. Vijayawada’s winters are nondescript. But it’s the season in between, the monsoons, that bring its beauty out. Despite the urban sprawl and the verdant greenery, Brown is the season’s colour. The waters in the canals and the river itself are flush with top-soil. To my eyes, a red and yellow Sun glowing through the dark clouds suffuse them with a brown sheen. The roads give up all pretence at civilisation, laying bare the brown earth below. The stubby, loose-earth hills, even the puddles and pavements… You get the picture.
The rains alone can tame the heat. Like that old line, an eye for an eye, a lot of rain is what you need to wash away the steady cycle of heat and humidity. Despite the relief, the city would be ill-prepared for the monsoon bounty. The streets were lined with open drains which would come spilling out. Electric lines would come down at every other corner. Rickshaws, the popular mode of transport, would provide measly protection to the patron — and none at all to the puller. Hiding under makeshift plastic canopies or jutting concrete overhangs, people would try to wait out each spell.
I never really liked the summer heat, still don’t. But for many years, I never liked the steady rains either. During the monsoons, I would find everything wet, dank and depressing. It took me a long time to realise that I needed to move to a different place, where the weather dials were set to different levels.
