CHAKKARAVARATTY, FORNICATION AND OTHER SINS

The day was hot as a pot of curry steaming in the stow. Humidity threatened to sublimate Anu's body entirely. Sweat seeped out of her body and turned to glue that stick bodies on contact. The custom of walk home from the friend's home was becoming a tedious affair.

- HARITHAT CHANDRAN

Walk home, she evaluated the ordeal this summer had become to her. Summer presented itself with a spurious grandiose to Anu. All the school year, she longed for summer to come that would precipitate endless pleasure in her life. The polaroid of memories of previous summers crowded her conviction and infiltrated her judgment. But neither it delivered the promise of the clamorous bliss nor the active company of friends. The disappointment was sprinkled in each dawn of May.

Obstructions to her summer bliss came in in parts. That summer's adversity began when her best friend Seetha left her village to enjoy the summer vacation in Munnar with her maternal grandparents. Thalassery was bustling with people in the warm march. But nothing beats the grandiose of Munnar. They had plans to spend innumerable hours wandering in the city malls and devour every flavor of ice cream over the summer holidays. But Seetha left unceremoniously and left a void on Anu's schemes for summer.

The next crater to her perfect summer came when her parents forbid her from swimming in the temple pond, which had become a ritual ever since she learned to swim. She was deemed too old to swim in her wet shimmies while adult men circled the Chuttambalam with prayers. Each summer in the lap of the serene stretch of water, she found a peace of mind that she would search for and not see for years to come in every nook and corner of the world. But she did not know that yet. The act of denial stripped her of comfort, too precious to be taken away from a thirteen-year-old. But moreover, it alluded her to think of her body.