Anu Recommends #25
Summer Solstice, nostalgia, and a podcast interview
Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!
2023’s summer solstice is almost upon us (June 21), the moment housed in the year’s longest day, and signaling the official start of summer. It has also inspired the topic of today’s newsletter.
And now and then, above, a whisking line of light across the darkness, evanescent, effervescent as a soda bubble at the back of the nose—did you see that?—there, gone, perception at the edge of the senses, a wish, and it is summer and there is freedom, and time, and luck to be had.
During the first lockdown back in early 2020, I received eagerly awaited bookmail from local publisher David Godine (whom I’d also interned at and, later, worked with). It was a copy of Nina MacLaughlin’s Summer Solstice, published by their Black Sparrow Press imprint. Originally published as a series of individual essays by The Paris Review Daily in the summer of 2019, now compiled as a four-part lyric essay that expertly juggles the dark, the light, the prosaic, the ephemeral. Reading the slim book has since become an annual ritual around this time of year—it invites savouring, lingering, revisiting, even as it presents to us the fleeting nature of it all. In short, everything I wrote on here last week about the joys of rereading (if you haven’t caught up yet or are new, you can find it here).
So let me ask you a question. Well, more like two. What signals the start of summer for you? And has it changed over the years?
“Summer is made of the memory of summer.”
For me, the summer of nostalgia is the summer of my childhood. The bookstore trip with my sister and dad as soon as final exams were done so we could stock up for the two months of summer holidays. The staying out for most of the day barring the afternoon playing and running with friends like we had all the time in the world—and it did feel like the days were endless, expanding to our plans and wishes, the possibilities of all these hours to fill. The mangoes. The sweltering heat, the whirr of the air-conditioner, the lazy, quiet afternoons reading under a thin blanket made from old sarees, silky, soft and cool to the touch (if you’re a regular Storyteller reader, you’ll recall me sharing an original poem on World Poetry Day; ‘Folded Silence’ was, in many ways, a paen to those summers of old).
Summer, when I moved to England for university, was much changed, and not just that it shifted from June-September or that I was in Mumbai for large parts of that, so effectively got no summer. Those memories aren't as potent, like they were a passing phase, but no less a part of who I am today.
Over the years, through four countries (Spain and the USA the ones that came after) with their own unique climate and seasonal quirks and patterns, my definition of summer continues to evolve; memories and associations piling up.
Not to mention the summer that was of 2020, just a few months after I’d first read Summer Solstice. This is what I wrote about it:
I love New England fall but it struck me over the weekend that the transition is going to feel very different this year because it hasn't been a “normal” summer by any stretch of imagination and that's made me a little thoughtful, a little sad.
Yet, as I look back on summer 2020, I realise that there are memories there, moments I don't want to forget for the sharpness of feeling they brought with them, for the occasional breathtaking realisations, for the sense that even though it seemed the world had faltered, stopped, life still continued, soft, fierce, firm in its joy and laughter, its pain and sometimes overwhelming melancholy.
I daresay other seasons inspire equal thought, meaning, and eloquence (one of the many reasons why I’m excited for the release of Winter Solstice by Nina later this year), but as a mood reader that feels the deep tug of the seasons—and by seasons I mean more about what those seasons represent to me personally than books set in them—I’ve been finding comfort in the words, the images, these essays house for the past three summers. And I want to share them with those of you who do/might feel the same 😊
The best kind of rereading (for me) is a mixture of comfort and collaboration. Summer Solstice, a tribute to what this season has meant in our pasts and what it might mean in our lives ahead, slots right in like it was always a part of my life, of my summers, of my memories, of my writing that I can only aspire to aim somewhere in the vicinity of Nina’s piercing-while-soft brilliance, her searching and insightful honesty, and effortless elaboration.
We have the rest of the year to hurry, to feel time's press, to be nagged by the feeling of a promise unkept. We start summer as we end: empty-handed, trying to steer the wind.
I had a wonderful phone call with Nina in April 2020 during the early days of the original interview-only iteration of this newsletter, and the interview was published a day before the 2020 summer solstice. If you wish to read it, click through below.
She has kindly agreed to come back for a chat around the time of Winter Solstice’s release, so we all have that to look forward to!
And after reading through this issue, the interviews, and Nina’s work, if you feel more need for summer reading, might I be cheeky and suggest a novelette titled Summer Melody? 😉
US buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09M4YJLWD
UK buy link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09M4YJLWD
Here’s where you can read the first five pages: https://alienbuddhapress.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/spotlight-summer-melody-by-anushree-nande
For more posts and info, including a detailed synopsis, why not travel back in time to Anu Recommends #2 from last December?
The Wings podcast: Celebrating India’s Youth
Speaking of interviews, I was actually on the other end for once recently, and it went live on Friday, June 16. I’ve not spoken for this long on something that isn’t completely football, so let me know how I did 😅
From their Spotify synopsis:
Podcast Creators: Asha & Milind Agnihotri
The storytellers in the Wings Podcast are Young Indians, in their mid 20s & early 30s, from across socio-economic strata, from urban and semi-urban India, ones who have found their own Wings or are in the process of discovering them with an aim to take them far and wide.
Year 1991 marked the beginning of a New India, a year that kick started a democratisation process of a new kind, one that rode the waves of Internet, Television Broadcast Networks & Mobile Telecommunications. This has shaped a new generation of youth deeply anchored in Indian values yet having global aspirations, a cohort for whom the world is a playground. The Wings podcast is an attempt to bring forth stories of these youth where they will share how they see themselves and the world they inhabit, their hopes and fears, their dreams and aspirations. It's an attempt to 'discover the extraordinary in the ordinary' and is driven by a belief that ‘the future is born in the web of human conversations'.
They picked a total of 75 guests because India completed 75 years of her independence last August, and I was honoured to be asked to be guest number 75, for the finale of the show’s current iteration.
Alright, that’s enough about me. Let me know how you’re doing, what you’ve been reading or watching, whether you have any plans for the summer that you want to share, and what summer means to you!
As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.
Take care and see you next week!
Anu
If you really like the newsletter, please feel free to buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/anushreenande
You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.
My memories of summer. Going with grandfather to buy mangoes by hundreds. Eating mango pulp and rotis. Sitting in the branches of a guava tree with a book. Drinking khus(vetiver)flavored water from earthen pot. Spending afternoons in a room with all windows and doors covered with khus curtains which needed to be wetted periodically. Sleeping under starlit sky on the terrace. Learning Sanskrit, English and better handwriting from aunts. Magical days.
"....and it did feel like the days were endless, expanding to our plans and wishes, the possibilities of all these hours to fill."
Such an evocative line! Lovely post, Anu.
Speaking of summer, I have always wondered what those in the Southern Hemisphere make of the North's complete domination over the summer narrative in pop-culture. The months we so readily identify with long days and bright sun, are days of winter in nearly half the world! And yet, I have not read any accounts of this strange dissonance. Its rather odd.