Before Slow Living Had a Name, There Was Nani Ka Ghar and Summer Vacations

Do you remember the exact feeling of the last day of school before summer holidays?

Not the day itself. The feeling. The way the bag felt lighter walking out, the way the same sun that was an inconvenience every other day, suddenly felt like a promise. Somewhere, a train ticket was already booked and Nani ka ghar was waiting. That journey itself was an event.

Windows that actually opened. The smell of railway platforms — something between samosas and diesel and dust. Your mother handing you a paratha wrapped in foil that was somehow still warm. Outside, the landscape slowly shifting with the cities thinning out, fields appearing, the sky getting bigger. And then the arrival. The house that always smelled the same. Cool floors., dark rooms, Nani at the door, somehow already knowing you were hungry. It was as if God decided to bring a gift us a heaven down here on earth and called it "Nani ka Ghar"

Within an hour, you had forgotten what school felt like. The afternoons there had their own rules. You did not go outside between twelve and four. This was not a suggestion, it was an unsaid law in the house that all children must abide. The sun in May was not something you argued with. So you stayed inside, mostly on the floor, because the floor was always cooler than the bed. And you did what children only do when there is truly nothing else to do.

You existed without purpose. You drew things. You read the same Champak you had already read. You made up games with cousins that had no logic and no end. You fought. You made up. You fought again. Outside, the street was empty. A dog slept under a car. The ice cream wala would come later. You knew his bell, you could recognise it from three lanes away.

That one huge cooler in the room was a whole personality in its own. Filling it was a morning ritual. Someone carried the water, checked the grass pads, made sure it wasn't just blowing hot air. When it worked, it was everything. When it didn't, the afternoon became a negotiation with heat — wet towels on foreheads, hand fans pulled out from somewhere, windows opened on one side and closed on another in some optimistic theory about cross-ventilation.

And then the power cuts. Always in the afternoon, always. The cooler would slow down, take a breath, and stop. The fan would make three, four and five final rotations and give up. The silence that followed was heavier. Warmer. More honest. And somehow, everyone just adjusted. Moved to the verandah. Found shade. And simply accepted it. No one panicked. No one reached for anything. You just waited, together, for the power to come back.

When it did, it felt like a small miracle every single time. Mangoes appeared without being asked for. A plate would arrive — already cut, already arranged — and no one questioned it. You just ate. Sitting on the floor, on the bed, on the steps of the verandah. The kind of mango that ran down your wrist if you weren't careful. The kind that made you close your eyes without deciding to.

Nani knew which ones were ready without looking. She would press them slightly, smell them, keep some aside for tomorrow. She had a system. She always had a system for everything, didn't she?

The holiday homework sat in your bag, somewhere, untouched and unbothered. Evening came slowly in those houses. The light would change first — softer, longer shadows. Someone would open the curtains. The cooler would feel effective again. Children would drift outside one by one, as if the street were quietly calling them back.

And then, finally, the bell! The ice cream wala appeared, cutting through the evening like a small announcement of joy. You ran. Everyone ran, even with money already in hand, even with no reason to hurry because some habits don't need logic. And we have to agree that those ice creams in the most basic flavours tasted hundred times better than any ice cream parlour delicacy!

ID 130718827 Ice creams in Summers NM Digital 1920 X 1080

After dinner, no one went anywhere. Everyone just sat together. Not watching anything, just sitting. Someone talked, someone else responded. A story would start about the family, about the old days, about something that had happened long before you were born. You listened, half-asleep, not fully understanding but not wanting it to stop. And when sleep came, it came like loving hug on Nani's lap or in Nanaji's arms.

We did not have a word for it then. But there is one now — Slow Living. The idea that a life lived at a gentler pace, with more presence and less urgency, is not a luxury or a retreat. It is simply a more human way to be.

Those summer afternoons were slow living before anyone thought to name it. Nobody was optimising anything. Nobody was productive. The power cut came and nobody complained for long. The mango was eaten slowly, without guilt. The evening passed without an agenda. And somehow, those were the days that stayed.

We call it doing nothing. But it was everything. It was the only time in the year when time slowed down enough to actually be felt. When a single day felt like a week, in the best possible way. When you were so completely inside a place that the place never fully left you — not as a memory you have to search for, but as something your body still carries.

The smell of that house. The sound of that cooler. The particular weight of a May afternoon with nowhere to be and no one asking anything of you.

Perhaps slow living isn't something we need to learn. Perhaps we just need to remember it.

The summer afternoons of childhood were not empty. They were full. Full of heat and mangoes and power cuts and cousins and ice cream bells and stories told after dinner in the dark. We just didn't know, then, that we were living the part we would miss the most.