so here is how it works... write a comment telling us about your best indian summer! describe away or perhaps keep it simple! the best story wins this lovely floral and stripe scarf... it is the perfect light scarf for summer or layered for winter. colorful, bold, easy to clean and of course stylish. the winner will be announced September 1st...
in the meantime be sure to check out an indian summer for inspiration.
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My best Indian Summer was back East, in PA. So wonderful to feel the warm days after the leaves have turned and you have already put on your heavy fall jacket. So great to shed that jacket and run free in the heat of the day!
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ReplyDeleteMy favorite Indian Summer moment was the day of my wedding. It was one of those perfect days: lapis blue sky, golden sunshine warming the crisp air, leaves turning yellow and orange and red above the grass, which was still vibrant green. I carried spider mums, chocolate cosmos and Russian olive leaves in my bouquet, we listened to my friends and family read poetry at the ceremony, we ate fluffy cake and then we danced into the inky, starlit night.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite Indian Summer moment was in July of 2001. I spent a few weeks at a gathering out in Idaho - camping in a tipi, drum circles, great conversations. One of our neighbor camps was the Hare Krishna camp. Laying tangled in sheets in the tipi late at night, listening to the drum circles in the distance and the soft chanting from the Krishna camp, smelling campfire and sandalwood...a perfect moment in time.
ReplyDeleteMy best Indian summer was spent in Sikkim this year -glorious sunny days , chilly evenings when you snuggle into your woollies and walk up narrow paths with the wind on your back and settle down for a quick cup of Temi tea and a slice of apple pie at the Lotus cafe ;the monasteries set deep in the mountains - the serenity of the Buddha, the laughing eyes of the boy monks and their immense joy in everything . I loved the distant peace of the icy Kanchenjanga veiled in clouds , I loved the green clad mountains and the river gorges , the slim and long bridge straddling the valley at Sintham and the utter simplicity of the hill people - the colour, the warmth, the shadows of the mountains , the lightness of being - that summed up for me the perfect Indian summer !
ReplyDeletemy best indian summer was last year- my now husband, his parents, my mom, some of our friends from college and i were staying in an orphanage with some children we love more than anything in rural andhra pradesh. my husband asked me to come up to the roof of the orphanage with him after all the kids went to bed, got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. i gave him an emphatic yes and we spent a few minutes talking about how much we loved the place we were in, how much it felt like home, how all 150 kids had stolen our hearts forever.
ReplyDeletethen, the next day, the kids and staff at the home threw us a proper indian-style engagement party: 450 people (give or take), 2 hours worth of blessings and congratulations all in telugu, a new wedding sari for me, fireworks and dinner for all. (and a cake- which said, 'happy birthday', and a banner wishing us a joyes engagement.' so much love! it really was absolutely a perfect evening.)
it gets even better- the day after the party, the kids all had school canceled in honor of our engagement, the staff rented two flatbed trucks and we piled the boys on one and the girls on the other and took them all to the ocean for a day at the beach. :)
crazy, ridiculous, perfect in every way. full of love, sacrifice and blessing.
Hi
ReplyDeleteMy best indian summer moments were in India while i was a school going kid. It was fun to spend hot summer afternoons with cousins and grandparents. We kids used to fight a lot and actually made a mess by the end of the day. Granny used to serve a glass of aam panna and buttermilk every two hours to keep us hydrated. I miss being a kid
Hello,
ReplyDeleteMy favorite summer moments are from my childhood. During summer vacation, we would take road trips all over northern India. It would be crazy hot, and we would hang towels on the car windows to stop the sun (we didn't have an A/C car or tinted windows), we would stop by in the fields and my sister and I would take dips in the tube wells. Cold water on hot hot skin, I can still feel my goosebumps come :) followed by a glass of sweet buttermilk. Best summers ever!
What a fun giveaway!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite Indian Summer would have been when I was around ten. My sister needed to take some exams in Delhi and daddy managed to get us a little cottage (barrack) to spend the two month "vacation" (only for me --sis was studying hard) on the Delhi Ridge. We woke every moring to the sound of peacocks (is there anything more beautiful than the meloncholy mee-aao of peacocks in the morning??--you'll only ever know it if you've experienced it!). No TV, no video games, no nothing. Just a little girl exploring the (semi) wilderness around. There were mulberry trees (with the white mulberries-the sweetest kind!), Jamun trees, ants to watch, squirrels to chase.... You get the picture! That is my happy place that I escape to when I need it!
In the evening, my sister would come home and we'd sit on the steps in the courtyard while the night grew cooler and share stories and mangoes...we had a little transistor radio that we'd tune in to "yuva vani" for music. Anyone out there remembers this?....and then it would be time for (ma's homecooked) dinner...
pure. bliss.
Indian summer to me means Mangoes, sweet memories with cousins , grand parents home, hot sweaty nights, carefree and lazy days. playing in the feilds drinking coconut water right off the trees. Oh how I miss those days. Its those memories of Indian summer that I will forever hold in my heart.
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ReplyDeleteMy favorite Indian summer moments were those ones during the war. Every day we would wonder where's the bombs are going to fall today and if would have to spend hours in our bunker which was too small for all of us. It was scary. But we kept on living. It was possible by all the simple pleasures - blue skies, unexpected cooling rains of summer, endless love and care of those around us at that time and the invisible power. Plus mangoes with salt and chili powder.
ReplyDeleteI have spent most of my summers in India - the best memories are of my childhood when we used to laze around, read books, eat mangoes and take long siestas swayed by cool summer breezes..I vividly remember the paisley upholstery on the chairs of my grandparents' coffee estate, the planter chairs and a huge recliner that could seat 5 little cousins all at once...:)
ReplyDeleteSharon
Wonderful! I love it!
ReplyDeletegreetings from Holland,
Ineke
Best summer i can think of are two actually right now...i cant simply forget the time my naani (grandmother) used to make us spicy bhelpuri in this big drum of hers and then roll up the newspaper to serve in. then v all ran upstairs on the roof with our cliched straw hats from the juhu beach and got cheesy pictures clicked...those pictures make me smile still.....another summer is this very own when all brusied on my foot i still jumped from the rock into the river ganga for the *cliff jump* experience. :)
ReplyDeleteWow! Reading about everyone's summers in India makes me envious. I so hope to get there someday. My favorite Indian summer was the summer I met my husband in Jackson, Wyoming. It was perfect.
ReplyDeleteMy best Indian Summer would be when I was a child at our place in Ahmedabad. We stayed in a small Railway Quater where me n my sis used to play in the backyard. We had a swing on the Neem tree where we used to spend a lot of time. We used to wear simple floral cotton frocks which my mum stitched at home. Afternoon games would be carrom, cowry shell games and snakes and ladders.. Then we used to cool ourselves with the yummy 'Aam Pana'(a cool drink made up of Raw Mangoes) which my mum used to make.
ReplyDeleteIn the evenings we used to ride our bicycles all around the colony and then go near the rail track to see the trains go bye...
We used to relish the delicious snacks my mum made for us and the mangoes which I jus loved.
I will never forget those summers in which the heat never was a dampener to our spirits!!
My best Indian summer is every summer i have had which means lovely clear azure skies, fragrant snow white mogras(jasmine),
ReplyDeletecheerfully bright yellow ripe mangoes, creamy off-white green speckled kulfi,
blazing red gulmohur(flame of the forest), pleasant pink of watermelons and
brown parched earth among other things.
I loved my childhood summers spent in my grandmother's home in Mangalore in South India. In the days before cheap airfares or trains, we took the bus - a long 24 hour journey made exciting by counting down road markers along the way. Once there, we kids were treated like royalty. We had the pick of the land - luscious mangoes, aromatic jackfruit, tender coconuts and fresh seafood from the village market. We went frog spotting and porcupine-quill-collecting and spent the evening listening to tall tales spun by my now-almost-80+ grandmother. Bliss - I hope my son gets to experience some of that.
ReplyDeleteLest you think otherwise, an Indian summer is really all about extremes. The sun beats down such that it sucks the last drop of water from the dry, parched land. The heat is unbearable. It doesn't make you sweat, it threatens to burn your skin. The dry, dusty loo winds rage outside during the afternoons. It is a cruel sort of weather, really. It is therefore surprising that once it makes way for the coveted rains, it makes us forget just how torturous it really was. All that is left behind are the memories of the mangoes, the mixed fragrance of chameli (jasmine) and mogra and roses and kevada, the ice-cold sherbets and shikanji (lemonade), the kulfi (milky ice-cream) and ice-golas. An Indian summer has a vocabulary all it's own. It's not to be translated, it's to be experienced, internalized.
ReplyDeleteThe Indian summer of my childhood is in a small mofussil town in northern India. Let me take you there. Air-conditioners have not yet become of a part of even affluent households and hot afternoons are cooled by desert coolers. When the fan whirrs to life, it sends out a wet mist into the air, making one want to wrap oneself in a khes (cotton coverlet) and sleep the afternoon away. It's almost always too hot to eat. Fruit cools in the frig, watermelon and mangoes and musk-melon and water is drunk from earthen matkas (pots). Jugs of aam-panna (a drink made from raw mangoes) are made every morning. The garden is full of bunches of gainda (marigold) blooms. There are khus (a kind of grass) curtains covering the verandahs, gamely trying to hold the sun out. Water is thrown on them everyday, making the air headily fragrant. Some brave children are willing to counter the heat for the love of cricket. The only garments that are kind to the skin are made of the lightest cotton and the silk saris are packed away with the razais (quilts) and kambals (blankets). Power cuts are a way of life and nobody thinks anything of picking up pillows and sheets at night and making their way to the terrace, telling each other ghost-stories and finally going to sleep under the starlit skies, the night breeze cool on our skin, the sound of crickets buzzing in the air and the occasional firefly display is a veritable treat. Summer vacations go past languorously, marked by comics and long naps and indoor games played on the floor rendered warm by the heat of the day, the dog sprawled next to me, it's tongue lolling out.
That summer stays in the most treasured part of my memories. It stays in the place where all is good and all is innocent.
Oh, such lovely stories! THANK YOU all so much for sharing your stories with Bianca and me :)
ReplyDeleteBianca: Eagerly waiting for you to announce the winner in a couple of day! Thanks again for hosting the giveaway for An Indian Summer readers!