Milk Chocolate Summers

When I was younger I told my friends I liked dark chocolate—bitter dark chocolate, eighty-five percent cocoa. I found dark chocolate was sophisticated and elegant, so having an affinity for it decked me with maturity. Although I boldly conveyed my unique interest in the bitter and dry taste, somewhere buried inside, I truly loved milk chocolate. Not just any milk chocolate, but the most simple and effective kind. Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. It was the very taste that imaginarily lingered on my tongue during the car ride Mummy and I took from Chandigarh Airport to my hometown.

It was fun to say Panchkula, India was my home; the name rolled funny in my mouth when I was barely ten years old. No matter how the name of the small, yet densely populated town felt on my tongue, it was where I was born, but more than that, it was my summer. 

Summer was the beige dusty sidewalks of Panchkula filled with boisterous characters, dogs trotting through the streets, and cows pausing in brief moments of introspection. The streets of my hometown had the pungent aroma of a hearth and masala chai as the car air conditioner filtered the breeze from outside. The car always wobbled and hobbled from the airport even on fine roads, but at the end of the rickety ride, I was always left at the doorsteps of Shakti Apartments filled with glee. 

The moment we arrived, I would leave my bags for Mummy to handle and run up the ramp (yes, along with stairs, there was a ramp; it was and always will be the most fun part of the apartment building) to the fourth floor and into my grandmother’s outstretched arms. The embroidery on her kurta would itch my face, but it barely irked me as warmth flowed through my veins and summer officially came. 

***

Moments after I stepped into the cosy apartment on the fourth floor, I would be met with my second heartfelt embrace: two bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. The chocolate was always held delicately by the extended hand of Metani Uncle as he eagerly waited for me to take them. He would sit quietly on the sofa afterwards with our family scattered around the room as I snapped the first square of the bar in my hand. Metani Uncle would grin as he saw me devour the chocolate from the corner of my eye. He didn’t say much, but the eloquent squares of chocolate were all the words that needed to be exchanged between us.  

Mummy always napped once we arrived, but I was ready to run around the building under the hot summer sun and cartwheel across the dry grass surrounding Shakti Apartments. I licked popsicles, munched cream-filled biscuits, and drank icy milk with heaps of granular Bournvita powder. 

I cherished slow rickshaw rides around the town and ran errands in nearby overcrowded supermarkets. Center Fresh bubble gum burst in my mouth all summer long as I watched puppies gallop around the streets as if they ran the world as much as anyone else. Last but not least, I broke off squares of milk chocolate until the golden foil and crisp deep purple wrapper were left with nothing in between. 

There was something about plain old Cadbury Dairy Milk that I adored as a child. It must have been the way it melted heavily on my tongue and filled my stomach with sweet goodness. While licking the chocolaty residue from the wrapper, my tongue would water at the dense flavour that was too simple yet too good to be true. My heart throbbed when I finished the chocolates Metani Uncle gave me on the first day of summer, but the end was never the definitive end. You see, summer was a loop when I was young. It came every year with great certainty and my insides were always filled with excited butterflies as the car rolled from the airport to the front steps of Shakti Apartments.

My childhood summers in India were glorious as if that particular moment was plucked out and placed in an oasis. Soon, time squeezed during those magical summers; the days in Panchkula, India became shorter. From months, summers became weeks. From thriving in the great outdoors, I became cautious and cooped up indoors with a book. Whether my eyes wandered about the golden-tainted streets of Punchukla or were strained on a book, when I would first step inside my grandmother’s apartment, Metani Uncle would come on cue with two bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate; I would always snap off bits of the chocolate with enduring joy.

My mind engrained summer as the never-evolving, always-constant part of life. However, to my dismay, a gush of wind blew away the time I thought would always stay. Metani Uncle moved to Delhi and my nose was soon far too buried inside one textbook or the other. The carefree summers I abided by as a child dwindled, and soon I cautiously thought of the next two steps before putting the first one forward. 

***

The summers in Panchkula staggered and turned old. The streets no longer felt golden as I sat in the car with Mummy from Chandigarh Airport.

“I have exams, I need to think of my future,” I would yell fervently as Mummy tried to pull the books from under my face. So, she stopped persisting and let go as my mind was far too subsumed in the future—whatever I thought that meant as a seventeen-year-old. 

When visiting Delhi from Panchkula before we headed back for the start of school (the final year before my so-called future began), Mummy asked me cautiously whether I would be interested in visiting Metani Uncle. 

“No,” I said by default. The word rolled off my tongue like butter—almost too effortlessly. 

***

With books sprawled all around me and my attention out of grasp from anyone around, Mummy visited the very uncle who always made my summers memorable. She then came back with an outstretched arm. At the end were two bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. 

“He is very ill, but he went to get these for you when I told him we were in Delhi,” Mummy said as I gingerly plucked the chocolates from her hand. The ten-year-old child so many years ago met the chocolate bars with a smile, but I couldn’t help it when my lips trembled. For so long, I barely stopped to cherish the view filled with purple wrappers and warm embraces. I snapped off a piece of chocolate with a small part of my heart and placed it on my tongue. The taste was bittersweet as if a little bite of dark chocolate was inside me. 

Time warped and rang in my ears when I learned Metani Uncle passed away. You see, death distorts time as if the mind is trying to reverse the very truth that is inevitable and irreversible. With Metani Uncle, Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars were gone from my future and I was far too busy to be on the receiving end for the last time.