Love it or hate it, but you’ve gotta accept that summer is the dominant season in our country. We sweat, get tanned and crib about all the garmi but there are way too many things that make us look forward to the season. The fruits, the various desi beverages and the mandatory summer vacations are all the reasons why the Indian summer is a much-awaited season.

And then there are things that remind you of your childhood. The old school fan, the Rooh Afza sharbat which is always refreshing, and the orange bars that could buy you happiness in just Rs 5. The typical Indian summer has a lot of memories associated with it and if you’re one of the millennials who jumps at the first opportunity to stand in front of a cooler, you need to look at these summery illustrations:

There’s a reason we call it the king of all fruits.

Remember how a glass of this from one of the street vendors could save you from dehydration?

Even though all of us have ACs now, nothing can beat the charm of standing in front of a cooler and feeling the wind on your face. That’s when you knew, summer is here.

Another symptom of summer’s arrival would be the advertisement of this powder all over the television. Chubhti, jalti garmi ka mausam aaya! Aaya mausam thande thande Dermi Cool ka!

No summer would ever be complete unless the whole family, including all the cousins, took a trip to an amusement park.

There’s a bunch of things that Indian siblings fight about but this one usually caused war.

There’s one thing you miss the most when you finally enter the adult world: the summer holidays which allowed you to get up late for a whole month.

Can you even imagine childhood without the big, fat family trip to the most commercial hill stations year after year?

Eating ice right out of the freezer during a hot summer afternoon is another kind of addiction as many desi kids would agree.

More than the summer fruit, we waited for the purple summer tongue that happened after eating a couple of jamuns.

There were always ice-cream cups and fancy flavours ranging from strawberry to butterscotch but for us, it was the kala-khatta chuski that really got the ice freak in us going.

Spotting this fruit at every roadside fruit-sellers cart and making sure you guilt your parents into buying it for you was what summed up childhood.

You know it is a typical Indian summer when you wake up everyday and wish for the rains to arrive already.

Summer holidays gave us the opportunity to go to Nani’s house and come back with goodies, stories and a lot of love.

Every Indian child will tell you that happiness can be bought in just 5 bucks from the nearest ice-cream cart.

You’ve lived an Indian summer if your whole family, chacha and mama included, got together to complete your holiday homework a day before school started again.

A night without electricity was all about antakshri and games till, obviously, it got really irritating and we all just prayed for it to be back again.

A sharbat which has managed to refresh us within minutes for the longest time. In water or milk, Rooh Afza has always been the real summer saviour.

A lot of adventure activities, a lot of friends and a whole lot of memories, the real fun part about any summer vacation was the summer camp.

The tagline says it all.

Let’s be honest, umbrellas are way more handy during summers than during the rains in India.

We’d start counting the days to summer vacations the day the new school session started.

It was during the summers that everyone would jump at the opportunity of helping out classmates.

The one thing that scares us all about the summers: sweating.

Armed with our water bottles and the excitement to play new games, we’d all gather together in the summer evening.

In an attempt to make us more aware, our parents would choose the summer to go to the zoo.

Unbearable, yes but also lovely. That is exactly what the Indian summers are all about.

Design Credit: Aroop Mishra