Stepping Out on a Summer Afternoon

In all my time in this country I have never owned or driven a car. In a country where distances are the norm and public transport outside city limits is practically non-existent, such a state of affairs smacks of both stupidity and a quixotic streak. In reality, it wasn’t a decision I took as much as a state of affairs that came to be. The alternative, at least for short distances, is a bicycle. Though cycling is entirely fashionable these days, my chequered history with cycles has meant that I have ridden them sporadically. My current bicycle, for example, was bought from a collective in Brisbane simply because I had a sudden enthusiasm for the old “ladies bicycle” common in India in the early 80s. Thus I paid a good sum for a cycle shipped from India and re-upholstered here that is difficult to ride and prone to flats and now rests in the car park. So it is that where public transport is not available I walk. And over time I have grown addicted to this most lowly form of getting from A to B. For the minute we get on to a vehicle, be it even a bicycle, its all about flight and speed. Walking, in contrast, is leisurely, contemplative and eminently suitable to take in the sights. I owe many a discovery of odd spots in Sydney simply due to walking.

This weekend, for several reasons, I ended up walking around my suburb. Like many a suburb in Sydney, it’s a mix of high rises and houses set along streets. Many of the independent houses must have been built postwar though here and there you see older houses. A few bungalows are of the type called Californian here – these in fact are modelled on bungalows in British India. The older houses are from a time when the sun was sought to be shut out, the newer ones are built to bring in the sun. On a hot summer day, the sun can in fact be intolerable and reminds me of nothing but the summer heat of North India that brought on sun strokes. On such a day the dark brick houses look inviting, conversely on winter days they add a touch of somberness.

I like walking most in the autumn and winter. I like the coolness of the air, the drifts of leaves, bare branches, pale flowers against dark and glossy leaves, the early arrival of darkness and the chinks of light through shuttered houses. In summer on the other hand, the light is around till the night and everything is either blanketed by white, searing heat or air heavy with moisture through which you struggle to move.

This weekend was mildly hot and very muggy so I did not relish the prospect of a walk. Still, I had tasks, people to meet. Along unfamiliar streets were houses unusually astir with life. Summer flowers here and there, creepers of delicate pink-veined jasmine in bloom. White washed houses, the salty air, people at the beach. People walking on footpaths, children eating ice-creams. For perhaps the hundredth time, I thought of how Sydney in summer stirs ancient memories. Perhaps it’s my childhood spent in places much like this suburb, perhaps it’s the endless summers of my childhood. Perhaps it is something so old, so unknown that I cannot put a name to it. To walk the streets of Sydney in summer is therefore like something half-remembered, a feeling of having been here before.

Some houses are like my grandparents' before it was rebuilt. Many are in a row, closely stacked and share walls. I want to walk into these and be as before. My uncles, loose-limbed and gangly and so very young, teasing us. My brother in a corner or curled up next to my grandfather reading a comic he has read a hundred times before. My grandfather doing a crossword. The lingering smell of morning coffee in the kitchen, my mother and my grandmother engaged in desultory talk. The heat bouncing off the asbestos roof. Endless hours of playing on it. Uncles playing card games under the trees. Four o’clock flowers blooming extravagantly on the street. Eating fallen guavas and custard apples. 20p from my uncles followed by boiled sweets or "gold" chocolate coins from the corner store. With the fall of the evening, desultory chat on the doorstep after our meal till one by one we feel tired and then drift in to sleep.

Walking around I am invaded by such a sharp sense of nostalgia, maybe even something more keen like saudade, that it makes me feel immensely sad. It’s a sensation too extreme and yet one I want to continue to feel. What seems like an eternity later I am at the plant nursery. I pick up a cup of coffee and walk down to my cousin’s place.