"Memories of Summer Vacation”

My engineering degree was finally done—four years of struggling through Electrical machines, DSP, power electronics etc. at Anna University, surviving on hostel mess food and my amma's weekend care packages filled with homemade pickle and those crispy chips she made specially for me. I thought of taking a short summer vacation before entering into corporate work culture.

The plan was simple: three months of freedom. I'd saved up money from those weekend tutoring sessions where I taught neighborhood kids mathematics for fifty rupees an hour. I had it all calculated—train tickets to Goa, hostels that cost less than a good biryani, maybe even a motorcycle trip through the Western Ghats with my college friends Vicky and Yogi.

I even bought a new backpack, Red and black with more zippers and compartments than I knew what to do with. It sat in my childhood bedroom for three months, tags still attached, like a promise I couldn't keep.

But I think God had other plans for me. The rains started early that year. Not the gentle, romantic drizzle you see in movies, but the angry, persistent Chennai monsoon that turns the world into a watercolor painting running down the drain. April should have been dry season. Should have been the time when we complained about the heat and waited for the relief of the southwest monsoon in June. Instead, by the third week of April, the sky had turned permanently grey, like someone had drawn a sheet over the sun and forgotten to pull it back.

"Barath," my amma would call from the kitchen, where she was heating leftover sambar on the gas stove. "Come eat breakfast. At least the rain is good for the jasmine plants." But I wasn't thinking about jasmine plants. I was thinking about the trains I wasn't catching, the beaches I wasn't walking on, the version of myself I wasn't becoming.

My friends started making other plans. Vicky got an internship at his in bangalore. Yogi decided to take coaching classes for gate exam, "just to keep busy," he said. One by one, they adapted, moved on, found ways to make that summer useful.

But I kept waiting. Checking weather apps obsessively, as if my phone could negotiate with the monsoon gods. Reading travel blogs about places I couldn't visit, watching YouTube videos of motorcycle trips through mountain roads that were now rivers of mud. My laptop became my world. I'd sit at the small desk in my room—the same desk where I'd written my first love letter in ninth class, where I'd studied for my board exams, where I'd applied for engineering colleges—and lose hours scrolling through Instagram stories of people living the summer I'd planned for myself. But my parents were happy to have me home.

"This is nice," my appa would say over dinner, spooning more rasam onto my rice even though I was already full. "When was the last time we all ate together like this every day? Soon you'll be working, then married, then busy with your own family. Let us enjoy this time."

Suddenly I received a message in my phone. Her name was Priya. We'd been texting since college, one of those slow-burn connections that develops in the spaces between conversations. She was doing her master's in environmental science at Pondicherry University, and she'd mentioned wanting to explore the hill stations during summer break.

The plan was to meet in Kodaikanal. Nothing dramatic, Just two friends who maybe wanted to become something more, sharing a few days among the eucalyptus trees and misty valleys. I had it all worked out—separate accommodations, day trips to the lakes, evening walks where we might finally figure out if this thing between us was real.

I remember the afternoon I was supposed to book our train tickets. I was sitting at that coffee shop near my house.I had my phone in one hand, the IRCTC app open, ready to make it official. The rain was coming down in sheets outside, turning the street into a river. Auto drivers were pushing their vehicles through water that came up to their knees. And I just... couldn't do it. Couldn't book tickets for a trip.

I texted her: "Maybe we should wait for the weather to clear up?"

She replied: "Of course! No worries. Whenever you're ready."

But we never booked the tickets. She started posting pictures from a family trip to Kerala, smiling in the rain with her cousins, looking perfectly happy without me.

By the end of summer, our texts had dwindled to birthday wishes and the occasional comment on social media posts.

My amma started leaving little notes with my meals. "Try to go out today, even just to the temple." "Why don't you call your friends?" "The rain isn't so bad if you have an umbrella."

But she didn't understand. It wasn't about the rain anymore. It was about the person I was supposed to become that summer—confident, adventurous, someone who took chances and lived stories worth telling. Instead, I was becoming smaller, more cautious, someone who made excuses and waited for perfect conditions that never came. Sometimes, late at night, I'd close my eyes and live the summer that should have been.

Here's what I learned during those three months of staying - I learned that my amma's jasmine plants really did love the rain, blooming with a intensity I'd never noticed before. I learned that my appa had been saving newspaper clippings about my college achievements, keeping them in a small folder like treasures. I learned that my childhood bedroom, with its faded cricket posters and outdated engineering textbooks, held more memories than any beach or mountain could create.

I learned to cook my mother's potato curry recipe, standing beside my amma in our narrow kitchen while rain drummed against the window. I learned to find peace in the sound of devotional music from the temple loudspeakers, mixing with the rain and the pressure cooker whistle to create the soundtrack of home.

Most importantly, I learned that not every summer needs to be transformative. Sometimes growth happens in the staying still, in the accepting of what is instead of mourning what isn't.

Now six years have rolled out,I still have that backpack. Sometimes, when the monsoon comes early, I think about that summer and feel a strange kind of gratitude. Not for the disappointment, but for the way it prepared me for a life where most things don't go according to plan, where happiness often comes disguised as ordinary moments you almost missed.