Grishma: Summer and the Household Art of Cooling

Grishma, roughly mid-April to mid-June, is the hottest of the six ritus. Classical seasonal writing describes it as the period when the sun draws strength and moisture out of the body, and when appetite and stamina naturally drop. The traditional expectation is not to push through the heat but to do less.

The kitchen turns sweet, cooling, liquid and light. Buttermilk with roasted cumin, sattu, bel and aam panna, tender coconut, ash gourd, cucumber, melons, rice and moong become the summer staples across regions. Sour, heavily salted, deep-fried and very pungent food is eased off, and heavy meals move away from the middle of the day.

The cooling technology was domestic rather than mechanical: water stored in an earthen matka, khus or bamboo chik screens dampened at the window, floors washed at midday, cotton and light colours, an afternoon rest indoors, and cooking finished before the day peaked. Summer is also the one ritu in which classical writing permits a short daytime rest, on the reasoning that the season depletes rather than accumulates.

Seasonal storage belongs here too. The first real heat is when mango slices, chillies, papad and vadi go up on terraces to dry, and when the year's pickles are set in the sun — a habit that is both food preservation and a marker of the calendar.

The transition matters in both directions. Cooling is eased in as spring ends, and eased off again as the first rains arrive, because the monsoon reverses the logic almost immediately.

A plain modern note: heat illness is real and fast. Confusion, fainting, a very high temperature, no sweating or no urine output need emergency medical care, not a cooling drink. Households with elderly people, small children or outdoor work should treat heat as a medical risk, not only a culinary season.