Ice cream, ice golas, mangoes, picnics, sleeping in, swimming, meeting friends—what’s not to like about summer? Aside from the sweltering heat, summer vacations have always been something that every single one of us has looked forward to. Given our love, the fact that for some of us this is the last ‘free’ summer brings about a mixture of feelings. Suddenly, all those summer bucket lists over the years have merged into one giant pile of regret—what am I doing with my life?

The Initial Years

The concept of a summer vacation only hit me when I was in the first grade, where after my finals I was told that I get a break for around two months. In theory that seemed like a lot of fun but for someone whose highlight of the summer is Back to School shopping, I used to crave school during the break. I have an incredibly random mind in the way that I can remember the most useless of facts and events but can forget the important ones. In that way, the only memories of childhood for me are my summer vacations. A certain guilty pleasure (if I may call it that) for all of us was probably getting yelled at by our mothers for playing out in the sun without eating meals. From running around trees playing hide and seek, to getting tanned while treating the swimming pool like a giant bathtub, two months felt like two weeks, and being a little rebel gave us inexplicable thrills. Irrespective of gender, it’s safe to say that no 90’s kid’s childhood was complete without trading Pokémon cards, having Beyblade battles, playing on the Gameboy, obsessively watching Cartoon Network/Nickelodeon/Disney/Animax, or reading all of Enid Blyton’s work. Pretending that the soup bowl was a Barbie bathtub, and making your Hot Wheels collection do stunts that defy physics was a rite of passage for every kid.

Now that I’ve mentioned all the trivially vital memories, let’s get to the best part. Visiting grandma. All across the globe, it’s incredibly well-known that you cannot be a grandmother unless you overfeed your grandchild. From getting a taste of your mother’s hand-me-down dish (but better) to sitting and listening to stories about the times when toffees cost 2-3 annas, it’s clear that we all awaited spending summers with grandma throughout the year. If you think about it, most of us probably picked up hobbies and developed interests in things because of our grandparents. And for that, we really do owe them a lot.

The Onset of Puberty and the End of Middle School

Now that I’m almost twenty, I can feel myself turning into my mother. The laid-back adolescent attitude is mildly annoying and somehow makes me want to scream “Do something! Anything!” But if you think about what you did in the summer when you were in middle school, you’ll probably realise that not only did you drop all your hobbies, you wasted your summer binging movies and shows, and did nothing for self-improvement. Although that’s also completely okay, weren’t there times when you wished you could go back to your childhood’s summers?

The Present

After entering high school, we spent most of our summers coping with academic pressure. Even a second of taking a break served not the purpose to relax us but caused even more anxiety and stress. In college, a part of the break goes into interning, a part goes into being lazy, a part goes into stressing out about figuring out life, but nothing goes into reviving past hobbies. We choose to waste effectively three months of the year, and continually subject ourselves to the cycle of regret. Here’s a tip— don’t do that. You have plenty of time to be an adult. Enjoy this freedom while it lasts. Get off technology, learn something new, revive old hobbies, and relive your childhood. After all, learning from the purest of memories would shape you into your purest self.

-Nethraa Kannan for MTTN.

-Picture Courtesy: Agnihotra Bhattacharya, Aryaman Desai, Mayank Agarwal, Nishant Sahoo Arun Raj, and Manan Dhuri.