Summer is a time when everything seems to be changing in a peculiar way. Whether the change is for the better or for worse depends on the way one welcomes the new season.

Among other things, moods change and so do many things around us. In some cases, tempers rise and so does the pitch of the people’s voice in certain situations -- be it an office environment or a busy road. There is a show of urgency in almost everything we do. Even the simple act of drinking a glass of water -- the way we gulp it down while sweating -- shows the hurry we are in. What is it for?

The calmness, the slackness, the slowness, or the dullness of winters, as some people would call it, is long gone by the time the longest day of the year arrives. There are only a few hours of sleep available and the working day does not seem to end.

Come summer and the face of the streets and bazaars begins to change colour. The garment shops replace their warm clothes with the summer collection and put some of their stuff on for sale. The roadside vendors of desi cold drinks can be spotted in almost every nook and corner of a middle-class locality. In a posh area, it is at night that the city wakes up to the summer life.

The changing weather means different to different people. For a ‘common man’ who labours all day under the blazing sun, it is an unending test of his physical and mental toughness.

For the CEO of a multi-national company, summers perhaps would not make much of a difference in his centrally air-conditioned office. In the same way, while inflated summer bills are not the issue for the ‘selected few,’ they consume a major chunk of the meagre salary of a factory worker.

"Summers are superb," believes a friend of mine who’s in love with the weather. The reason he so eagerly counts days for the hot, searing, sunny days is not for some inherent emotional or biological factor but, I’m sure, for some worldly gains. He is a businessman and deals in air-conditioners. But my association with the weather is for different reasons.

Summers are there every year at their usual time. But today, they are not what they used to be some 28 years ago. (And, I’m not talking about the changing weather patterns here). That is exactly the time I was an 11-year-old.

Ah, time flies! Long strolls were a routine pastime in the afternoons, especially in summer holidays, with friends while the rest of the world seemed to be taking a nap.

We, a pack of about seven or eight boys, would not mind doing queer things: walking distances for no obvious reasons, climbing up a wall of a house, reaching out to a half-ripe mango and, later, relishing the unwashed fruit because hygiene was not our concern at that time. It was because either we were not the mummy-daddy type as we call it or there was no bombardment of soap ads, warning mothers of unfriendly germs.

That duration of about 2-3 hours of carefree, careless and unchartered territory would usually come to an abrupt end as some elderly would find out about our excursions and catch us loitering around.

And, it would not end here. The act of calling us back home was often accompanied by a couple of short slaps here and there, our cheeks burning red in the heat. That was the standard exercise to extract a commitment out of us that we would not skip the afternoon nap.

Today, those summer days are not an option for my own kids in a very controlled and calculated environment where they cannot go outside unattended. Also, our understanding of hygiene and nourishment has changed. While we make sure our children wash their hands more often and do not expose themselves to the sun or the outside unsafe surroundings, we give them various processed food items which are not helping them in any way.

Summers are here once again. Maybe, somewhere, at some place a pack of boys would be whiling away their afternoon. Summers, I love-hate you!