Everyone gets excited about summers. For one reason. But for me, June is the month I await. I first experienced June on my first day of college. I had become an indoor cat in my time between middle school and college and so forgotten what the elements feel like. Life, in the interim period, consisted of home, school and long car rides in-between blasting Rahman while my brother sleeps in the backseat. I sat in the front seat, he liked the sprawling space at the back. That’s how my prolific DJing skills were born. My brother - my twin - and I were always good at finding win-win solutions. The top bunk was mine, more privacy. The bottom his, more AC. Day time phone hours were his - more gaming time. Night time phone hours were mine - more texting boys time. But back to June.

And so when I was released from my home and went to Trichy, I once again experienced space. You know how when you’ve been fast asleep and your mom pulls the curtains open in your room flooding it with all the wattage of the sun? It was like that. Till that June, I had only experienced indoor fans and maybe an occasional tower AC in a wedding hall. But there, the moment I stepped into campus and started a hike towards the lecture hall, someone hit me in the face. Wind. Just gusts and gusts of it. I goggled and was jostled awake instantly from my indoor-cat-ness and remembered my past of wandering in the wilderlands with just my cycle and me, which I’d done only 4 years prior.

As soon as admissions were done, I packed up my parents, who’d just then bought me a bicycle. I took my cycle and rode around that vast campus once again getting acquainted with the elements after a long stint of being in the crate that was my school and apartment. My happiness at being out and about rivalled only that of an unleashed dog - so much that my terrified-of-college classmates and their attendant mothers thought that I was a senior repeating my first year again. If someone told me IIT Madras had deers and trees then I’d have calmed my tits and put a bit of effort in at 12th standard instead of the aforementioned texting. My college had cows. Despite being near the great river Kaveri, it was arid. IITM always seemed greener. No pun.

And by that scenic route filled with cows and sparse trees we arrive at what still remains my present-day favourite month - June. A time of wind, a time of freedom and the time of cooling Aloe Vera facewash winds that rinse the summer off the face of my home, Bangalore, restoring to the city all of its balm-like qualities. But alas these winds now are not so cool to me. I got sick a couple years ago just as these winds were beginning. Now, sometimes if i’m not cheerful, it will once again hit me in the face as I’m standing next to my dog, out in the open and I’ll remember all the clamminess of being ill from two Junes ago. Lord that was bad. But oh well, I’m well and into every life, some rain must fall. But before it falls, there’s june, in the pre-monsoon season.

And there falls now something else before rain. Loads and loads of them filling the ground, carpeting it as far as the mind’s eye can see. Aha. Jamoons! That little purple, tart bloom of the earth. Salty, sweet, the very flavour of mischief. Blink and you’ll miss it. These are temperamental fruits. But the best of them awaken in you the flavour of a different time. Now they arrive like neat American pebbles in plastic boxes, not so ripe and ready for the fridge. But oh you don’t know him (her?) like I do.

See in my first school there were many cruel traditions. The cruelest of them was the fact the teacher fuckers could buy samosas at break, but the students couldn’t. Even if I somehow smuggle in the princely sum of 2 rupees, the tea-time-santa-like brother with his tea boiler riding pillion in his manly bicycle and a bag full of the golden fried goods, will not sell them to me, a paying customer. Why not I ask? My brother didn’t have to suffer this injustice. He got samosas for 1Re in his much-better town back then (we grew up in different cities, that’s why he’s got them city-boy habits while I remain true to my salt-of-the-earth-jamoon roots). I swear children must be given the right to vote. They’d use it far better than us. Fairness is their primary governing principle.

And so I had to find other places to patronize. So I found the withered old lady, somewhere where the van doesn’t stop. The lady and her lap and the newspapers before her lap were all jamoon colored. She had them by the truckloads. Aha. She’d wrap them smooshy fruits in sheets of newspaper, sprinkle it with her fairy-old-lady salt, roll it up and deliver to me the best that money can buy for 2 rupees. To this day man, nothing comes close. Some were broken, some were crushed, so few were whole but all were the goods. It was mostly the stony seed with a little bit of fruit tagging along, salted brilliantly and bringing to you a fine, clean tart taste with a purple brightness sticking to it. Pah. Gordon Ramsay and his cohort are missing it. No fridge, no plastic. Just ready to pop in your happy mouth and bursting.

This religious experience was heightened by the fact that the old lady was not always there. The van wouldn’t always stop. I couldn’t go hiking to find her now, could I, she was thousands of kilometers away in a faraway land plucking magical fruits. So only once in a while will we get the blessings of Lord Murugan - the patron God of Jamoon - to both get old-lady to be present and van-anna to grant us the great kindness of making a pitstop. No one would buy us these jamoons, are you crazy, it was too muddy for our parents’ taste and because of its ready-to-eat nature, fundamentally unwashable. But to a small mouth, texture is king, not cleanliness. Actually even the big mouth was agreeing on this matter, till a few unsavory gastric incidents closed the curtain on the simple joys of the street.

Blink and you’ll miss it. That’s how short the season is for my plucky purple friend. What vivre for a fruit though. And now I’m ordering it on BlinkIt and still missing it. But this is where I must tell you about a magical elf.

See sometimes I open the door of my apartment and find outside a bounty. I do not order this bounty, my phone has no messages about it, they just appear. There is usually fruit inside. A bag full of guavas, a couple red tender coconuts. But when it comes to seasonal fruits, the bounty comes bearing a cornucopia of the brightest and sweetest. And come June ladies, in that bag, it rains Jamoons. The best of the best from HAL market. You guessed it, my mom moved to Bangalore a few years ago.

My mom is an interesting creature. I got my first job in college and told her about it and she said “what, didn’t get a better company?” Credit my salary directly to the therapist please. But today she doesn’t even let her calls ring over two rings. She doesn’t want us rushing to the phones from whatever important jobs we are doing - which we assure you, do not involve us sitting on our phones. She is unfailingly polite. She won’t ask you what your salary is. When we travel as a fam, if we are 3 people, we’ll get 3 rooms. We are very city-folk now. So it was natural that when she moved here, we all lived very happily in separate but nearby houses. Then she became a grandma and now lives with her grandson, my nephew who will never suffer samosa-injustice I hope, praise be to Lord Murugan.

But on her way between here and her house, she sees many fruit shops laden with the best of the sun-ripe. And she remembers me, her fruit-bat daughter. I don’t think she ever buys anything below 2kilos. And then it arrives quietly, kept outside, not disturbing me, ready for me to eat. Therapist fee worth it. Like that she delivered me from the miseries of blinkIt. I do order from other places, a local fruit vendor in our apartment society, but they just come close to brilliance. My mom achieves it.

So last month in that twilight time before I said bye to my best friend at the close of that brief dalliance which is the jamoon month of June, once again I got to almost have a religious experience. My mom had bought the juiciest kg of it, still pebble not stony but so juicy so juicy, almost squashed but still plump and ripe. I obviously had a kg of them already in my fridge, I am not stupid, any jamoon is good jamoon, but her additional godly deliverance was the best I’ve had in a long time. A fitting closure to this year. Like Cinderella’s carriage, all fruits start to turn at the end of the season, have you noticed? Jamoons become rocks. Mangoes are strange creatures, they are lasting this year into July, but have you tasted July mangoes? All the Mang of Mango is gone and O is left and they are having such an identity crisis that they start tasting almost like oranges. But my mother would say, any Mango is a good mango. She’s a mango fruit fanatic. Not like me. A sane person.