Sweetening the neem with her song

Sweetening the neem with her song, originally uploaded by Pixychik.

Growing up in Vizag and then Madras, very hot summers were part and parcel of life, and mom - with her fine adaptive skills that all fauji wives must possess - had learnt to fight the heat as much as one could, without ACs and coolers. It was the 80s, and middle class families like ours had fans, khus curtains, and loose cotton clothes for defence. Not ACs.

Her logic was to fight it more from the inside than the outside - with light and cooling foods - cucumbers, water-melon and gallons of lemonade and buttermilk. AND neem juice. Have you ever had neem juice? It's a death brew. To say it is chokingly bitter is to put it mildly.

But it works. And how! If you know a child that suffers from prickly heat come summer... throw out the useless Nycils, and make them drink 2 spoons of neem juice everyday for a week. The problem will go away. For life.

Meanwhile, in school, year after year, hindi text-books would carry at least one poem about the Koel - singing its sweet song in the summer - waking up the sleepy kids, ripening the mangoes, hurrying up the rain. I don't know if the Koel really did any of that - but the books said they did.

So the other day - spotting a koel in a neem tree - brought back a rush of these sweet memories from the 80s! And told me what I already suspected - the summer is here!