Water Melons, Mangoes, and early morning school

The heat in Indore is unbearable. You don't perspire too much here like in Chennai so the heat sticks within and your pee turns yellow and it burns! This time of the year back in Chittoor when I was in school; I used to get up early in the morning to attend school at 7:45 a.m. The little flower convent would function between 7:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. in the summers. That meant we had a 'breakfast' break during which we ate our packed breakfast (which was mostly uppuma, as mom preferred it; it was easier and faster to cook). And we had the whole afternoon to kill. We used to steal mangoes from the farms nearby. We used to jump the fence and walk in and pluck the mangoes and run away. We never got caught maybe because the watchmen were almost always old men and even when they did spot us, they only screamed 'I'll kill you! you offspring of the devil' or some thing to that effect, but they could only watch in disgust as a bunch of young thieves vanished right from under their noses. Funny thing was dad used to get baskets of mangoes from our farmer friends... but nothing like eating a stolen fruit, trust me!
The other thing I loved the most was swimming and eating water melons right after that. I learnt swimming in the irrigation wells. That again was a problem; if the farm owner caught us swimming in his well, he would either snatch our clothes away (we'd have left it on the edge of the well) or he'd simply turn the 'motor' on; we firmly believed that we'd be electrocuted if we were in the well with the motor on. Some farmers were generous, they had no hang ups with us swimming in their wells. A few years later I was swimming in the Chennai IIT's pool and I heard a couple of guys talking 'I can now swim in 9ft of water' to which the other said 'I can swim in 20ft, no shit!' And I realized what morons these city boys were. How does it matter if it is 10 or 100ft as long as you can swim?
It's been years since I had had a dip in a well or a pool. I haven't eaten any mangoes lately or water melons. Sad!

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