Summer vacations, once upon a time, didn’t begin with a buzz in your pocket, they arrived slowly, almost unnoticed, like a long, golden afternoon stretching ahead with nothing planned and everything possible.

They came with the whir of a ceiling fan on a hot afternoon, the smell of cut mangoes in the kitchen, and the distant sound of someone calling your name from downstairs. They came with long, unplanned hours — where boredom wasn’t something to escape, but something that slowly turned into play, conversation, or simply being.

And if you listen closely, across generations, you can still hear those summers, layered in memory, shifting in form, but holding on to something deeply human.

When every day felt like summer

For some, summer was never about vacations in the first place.

Growing up in a time shaped by migration and rebuilding, Kishan Khemani, an 87-year-old resident of Patparganj in Delhi, remembers a childhood where the idea of holidays simply didn’t exist. 

“From the age of eight to twenty, there was only struggle,” he says. “There was no concept of summer holidays when I was growing up.” 

And yet, what stands out isn’t the absence of leisure, but the presence of people. “Cousins, neighbours, family, we were always together. Every day felt special because we were together.”

Even something as small as the arrival of a radio carried a sense of wonder. “We liked listening to the radio,” he recalls, “but by the time they came, I had already started working.”

It was much the same with television. As exciting as it felt, it wasn’t something they watched endlessly. And when they did, it was rarely alone; those moments were shared with family, neighbours, and friends gathered together.

Having lived most of his life........

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