Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines.

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII

It’s May. Its long days sometimes make you feel that the month will never end. In public imagination, summers can make cities look uglier. From aesthetics to sheer physical discomfort, summer may leave too much for the elite, neo-rich and upwardly mobile middle class to negotiate in public spaces. Beyond their first world cocoons of regulated temperature at homes, cars and plush offices, they find something very Third World about the scorching summer heat. It’s some sort of disillusionment. A painful realisation that globalisation could not bring the European and trans-Atlantic climate to this country. Geography has denied them the ‘fringe benefits’ of the global package. ‘Oppressive’ heat is the operative phrase they use to describe this geographical divide. It is no coincidence that summer days have got short shrift in the nostalgic trips down ‘seasonal’ lanes (unless the hill station trips or those clichéd vacations at grandmother’s place are being spoken of).

But summer heat hasn’t escaped the poetic gaze. For the poet ‘oppressive’ has an entirely different meaning. Walking through the lanes of Allahabad in the summer of 1940s, legendary Hindi poet Suryakant Tripathi Nirala observed a woman labouriously breaking stones under the hot sun. Nirala sensitively described the grace of the toiling woman and used the scorching heat as a metaphor for the exploitative heartlessness of the rich. He wrote:

वह  तोड़ती  पत्थर
देखा  मैंने  इलाहाबाद  के पथ पर —
वह तोड़ती पत्थर ।

कोई  न छायादार
पेड़, वह जिसके तले बैठी हुई स्वीकार;
श्याम तन, भर बँधा यौवन,
हथौड़ा  हाथ
करती  बार  बार  प्रहार;
सामने तरु – मालिका, अट्टालिका, प्राकार ।

चड़ रही थी धूप
गरमियों के दिन
दिवा का तमतमाता रूप;
उठी झुलसाती  हुई लू
रुई ज्यों जलती  हुई भू
गर्द चिनगी छा गयी

प्रायः हुई दुपहर,
वह तोड़ती पत्थर ।

देखते देखा, मुझे तो एक बार
उस  भवन की  ओर देखा  छिन्न–तार
देखकर कोई नहीं
देखा  मुझे  उस  दृष्टि  से
जो  मार  खा  रोयी नहीं
सजा  सहज  सितार,
सुनी मैंने वह नहीं जो थी सुनी झंकार ।

Moving to popular culture (as expressed in mainstream Hindi film music), summer sensibilities have rarely echoed the Bryan Adam-esque romantic fervour of The Summer of 69. Summer has not enjoyed parity with the spring (basant) or rainy (sawan) seasons in Hindi film songs, and has rarely been associated with Hindi cinema’s idea of romance. It was as late as in 1975 that an idyllic summer night with the pleasant purvaiya (breeze) got its due in Hindi film Mausam. Gulzar penned the nostalgic number for the tunes of Madan Mohan and the voices of Bhupendra Singh and Lata Mangeshkar, as Sanjeev Kumar and Sharmila Tagore emoted:

Garmiyon ki raat jo purvaayian chale
Thandi  safed chaadron pe jaagen der tak
Taaron ko dekhte rahein chhat par pade hue
Dil dhoondta hai
Phir wohi fursat ke raat din
Dil dhoondta hai phir wohi!

But if summer nights can leave such trail of memories, how could blazing days be behind? Hasrat Mohani in his famous ghazal had romanticised the summer high-noon with lines describing  an unusual response from a beloved for a clandestine meeting. The bare-footed girl chupke chupke heading towards the roof was shown on the silver screen in Nikaah (1982). Ghulam Ali’s voice was enacted by Deepak Parashar and Salma Agha, and the summer noon stirred the romantic chord with:

Dopaher ki dhoop mein mere bulaane ke liye,
Wo tera kothe pe nange paaon aana yaad hai,
Humko ab tak aashiqui ka voh zamaana yaad hai
Chupke chupke raat din aansu bahaana yaad hai.

Apart from these, it is  interesting to remember that rare references to two different forms of summer wind: the gentle purvaiya and the harsh loo have also been heard in two songs which cannot be more different in their lyrical as well as musical pitch. If you are confused, listen to Lata Mangeshkar urging the purvaiya to be more discreet in Chupke Chupke (1975), with Jaya Bachchan humming on the creeping realisation of love.

The harsh loo got a passing reference for its romantic effect in a song  in which you least expected it could. Listen again to the song Kajra re from the Hindi film, Bunty and Babli (2005), and in the high pitch exchanges of words, note what Gulzar wrote:

Teri baaton main kimam ki khusbu hain
Tera aana bhi garmiyon ki lu hain

Mainstream Hindi films’ romance with summer has rarely gone beyond fleeting eye contacts, few and far between. Courtship has been the privilege of other seasons. It is ironical for the simple reason that summer expands to at least seven months of the year in mainland India and the Hindi heartland. But then how many know what purvaiya is?

Meanwhile, you can have your share of summer with something which doesn’t need much sensibilities but taste buds. Summer in India can pride itself on its mangoes. And I hope the woman who is still busy todti pathar also gets some of them.

Image Source [http://www.flickr.com/photos/thezionview/2496388075/]