An ode to the Chandigarh summer

I did not like sleeping that summer, neither at night nor during the day. Sleep was a buzzkill that needed to be controlled. I came to Chandigarh after spending my entire life in a small town. The difference was distinguishable. I didn’t know how to respond when someone complimented me on my red shoes in the elevator, except to smile.

I struggled to make friends with locals and preferred spending musical evenings in cafes, eating at Stu C, and window shopping at Elante, all by myself. But that summer changed everything. The city kept giving. It gave me my favourite people from college, whom I called home. With them, I wasn’t shy anymore. I could sing with them whenever we jammed indoors without caring about how bad I sounded.

I can still feel the taste of masala chai and churi we ordered at 3:30 every night. Uber drivers called us the next generations of Satyajit Ray and Yash Chopra when, on our way home, we critiqued 30-40 movies we had watched that summer at the same Elante. Witnessing the sunrise with them at Sukhna with the sounds of the larks, transitioned me from nobody to a Shakespearean main character. I thank thee, Chandigarh summer, for making me smarter and social.

Akshay Sharma, Chandigarh