Do you ever have a song, an idea, a storyline, or an image stuck in your head? And it just refuses to go away? For some time at least? I have this with music—it could be a song, an instrumental piece, a jingle, etc. This becomes my “now’”song, and the “nowness” (pardon my English here) could be for any length of time.
My now song is “Yesterday once more” by The Carpenters from their 1973 album Now & Then and written by Richard Carpenter and John Bettis.
Along with the heat and humidity, the summer brings on nostalgia for me. Of summers spent with my maternal grandparents in Mumbai. Of golden mangoes, chilled sugarcane juice and bhelpuri. Of cricket and hide & seek with cousins and friends. Of Pallankuzhi and stories with Paati. Of reading story books in the hot afternoons. Of listening to the radio and singing along . . .
I was thinking about all this while travelling to work by bus today morning. And almost on cue, as if approving of my nostalgic thoughts, a co-passenger’s mobile phone rang. Can you guess what the ringtone was? Yesterday once more. 😀
So what nostalgic memories (and songs) do you associate with summers? Tell, tell 🙂
My Favourite Things 
That is one of the sweetest classics that truly capture the spirit of nostalgia without sounding affected, kicking waves of memories in listeners like us. And just as in the song, when they get to the part, where he’s breaking her heart, it can really make my cry, just like before.
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Yesterday once more is timeless and a song that is not defined by area or region. It is indeed universal. And as for Karen Carpenter, how I wished I could sing like her …
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It was a song that even I loved but it was so loooooong ago! 🙂
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But then this is a timeless classic and what could have been long ago does not seem so onve you hear it, right?
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About three years back. I set this song on my mobile phone as caller id for my old friends. Nothing could be more appropriate
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I agree 🙂
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What beautiful memories you have shared here, Sudha. I have some of those too. And then, some more. Sorting out my little library in the terrace room and getting all dusty. Running from the aam panna Dada would want me to drink. Working on projects and charts for my school holiday homework, Mom being my scissor and fevicol assistant. Ah, bliss. 🙂
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You don’t like aam panna ? I love it 🙂
And lovely memories too, especially sorting out the library part.
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ahh summer vacations hold so many memories..trips to grandparents, playing chess every afternoon with sister while eating soanpapdi..many more!
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Childhood memories are really something, aren’t they Reema? 😀
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Of village life, spent with maternal grand parents, near Chennai. Lovely afternoons, with a full gang of friends, go around for eating raw mangoes off the trees, drinking coconut water from the farm, eating “Korukkapulli kai” from the throny tree, jumping into the pump set waterfall, eating fresh sugar cane off the fields, fresh ground nut from the field, and earning wrath of grandfather!.Eating the old rice in the morning with thick curd and pickle, lovingly mixed by aunts and given into hands directly, aunts making garlands of kanakambaram flowers , with our help- arranging a row of two flowers each – the list is endless.
Those were the days, we thought it will never end. But all gone long ago, except the affection and love , that is residual even now.
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What lovely memories, Jayalakshmi. Both sets of my grandparents were very much city-based so village life is quite alien to me. But paredu chaadam with a vadu mangai is still something that I enjoy very much even today. As for the affection and love and memories, they will never go away.
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