One of my earliest memories of eating litchis is inside our first car. Bought literally at the turn of the millennium, a second-hand off-white zen that papa learnt to drive in two days. Or maybe he was just brushing his lessons from another lifetime with his elder brother. Too scared, thin tiny bodies, me and my brother, a first cousin and another first cousin would sit in the backseat.
Our thin bodies on the small but comfortable manual car. A tiny car I was growing to love without even knowing it.
I digress though, this is about the litchis not the Zen. Papa, maa, bhai and I were on our first road trip in the car and it was the summer of 2000. Our car was cutting through some part of rural Uttar Pradesh when I saw a roadside vendor selling them on a cart. Papa pulled over and we bought our standard five kilogram of litchis.
Why? Because nothing less than that ever did for me. I remember laid out before eyes, the road was dry, parched till the eyes could see. Several mirages showed up and thinned out before our eyes. The brother and I often trying to catch them from behind the windshield.
My face stuck out of the rolled-down window and Papa taking a U-turn on a not-so-wide highway. The summer sun touched my cheek and dried the litchi juice splashed on it. My chin, neck, fingertips, lips, arms, palms, teeshirt--soaked in the juice. The car door to my left, it's rubber helm sticky with the litchi juice. The sweetness so sweet I forgot how disappointed we all were at papa for not knowing how to turn the AC on in the car.
And I remember jutting my face out of the window, to the sun with my most livid bravado only so as to dry the juice on my face without having to use my hands. My hands soaked in litchi juice, only so I could lick them off my arms till the elbows.
That summer sun. That litchi juice.
Mother didn't mind the dirt, the gruff, papa didn't mind the sticky juice lurking in the backseat of his new second-hand car. Bhai and I downing litchis as fast as we could. Me getting angry at him if he ate even half a litchi extra. Downing. Swallowing translucent goblets of that out-of-the-earth sweet juice. Occasionally looking out of the window to catch some sun in the eye, or feel the grime from the road stick to the cheeks. Sometimes speaking a muffled word or two, with two litchis stuffed inside the mouth to complain to the parents about the brother who ate a litchi or half more than me.
Litchis were religion, against the summer sun, a manner of coping the forty degree celsius'.
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