As vicious as our hot season is, there's also a strange, sweet nostalgia about summer days too. India's seasons are so distinct and memorable, and when one season segues into the next, you begin to miss the sights and sounds of the previous few months.
The hues of summer are fiercely bright and are sweetened by loads of abundant fruit, all courtesy gorgeous flowering shrubs and trees that burst into bloom as the mercury rises, painting the countryside and cityscapes with fiery reds, golden yellows, calming purples and dazzling pinks. Do you know which are your favourite summer trees?
Also called the neela gulmohar, its lavender-blue trumpet-shaped flowers lend cool, soothing colours to hot weather landscapes. The carpet of its fallen blossoms are more royal than a Kashmiri galeecha.
One of the most striking flowering trees of April, May, June, July is the gulmohar, called flame tree or flamboyant tree. Flamboyant indeed, its tall, ever-stretching branches form a canopy of brilliant vermillion above us, competing with the clear blue of the sky.
The sight of a litchi tree laden with bright red fruit immediately reminds one of the taste of its juicy, flesh. The tree thrives in tropical and sub-tropical climates and Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal produce tonnes of the loveliest litchis.
How can you look up at a bael tree, groaning under the weight of its hard-shelled fruit, and not think of chilled bael sharbat instantly? Its greenish-white flowers metamorphise into fruit the size of bowling balls.
Until you actually examine lagerstroemia blossoms closely, also called jarul, you will not realise how pretty and delicate they are, with crinkled, crepe paperish petals, like the lace pink handkerchief of a fairy perhaps. Its flowers can be pink or lavender.
Called palash and dhak too, Butea monosperma is a deciduous tree celebrated for its vivid scarlet flowers that bloom in full glory during late winter and early summer. It has cultural and religious significance. Rabindranath Tagore wrote poems about its fire. Leaves of this tree are woven into donas and pattals to eat off of (India's disposable dinnerware in use long before the term eco friendly was invented).
The rain tree's odd-looking puffball flowers, bursting with pink stamens, are not what make this tree noticeable. Instead what catches the eye is its enormous umbrella shape, with almost motherly welcoming branches beckoning all to come and share its shade.
Revered for its sweet-smelling yellow-orange flowers, the glorious-looking champak tree is often found near temples. Its phool are used in perfumes and for religious rites.
Aptly called the golden shower tree in English, the amaltas' bright-yellow, cascading flowers are a rush of colour and make sure the tree is the most cheerful landmark on any horizon. It is Kerala's state flower.
Another deeply heartening summer sight is spying the beloved mango tree towering over the countryside around it, carrying the weight of its bounty, the king of fruit. A cultural and culinary icon of Indian summers, no less.
Its graceful white flowers, with bright yellow innards, give off a light, elegant fragrance and were worn behind the ear of many a Bollywood heroine. A variation of the champak tree except it is called white frangipani and its leaves and flowers have a slightly different shape.
The gay abandon with which the bougainvillea bush explodes in a riot of colour, pouring out brilliant, papery white, magenta, pink, orange flowers, lifts the heart, a sight for sore eyes and worth a ballad or song as elegant as William Wordsworth's Daffodils.