A person born and brought up in Bombay hardly knows about the pleasent feelings the word "Summer" can bring to one's mind. I experienced that feeling after coming to Berlin - a sunny day after days of harsh winter can bring a smile to your face. It urges you to leave all your work behind and go out. Around the end of January - when it is still snowing but there is no snowman around - you are very desparate that winter should end. You have already started planning what all things you will do this summer. A long beach and very blue calm sea - and you walking on sand in a pair of cotton shorts with your sandles in hand and goggles on your eyes - feeling lucky for nice weather. It is like the summer breeze pushes behind all the problems in your life and you feel so light. You know there is next winter somewhere out there - but I don't want to think about it now !!!
That is the picture title of the book "Summer Crossing" brings to my mind. This is a novella by Capote. More like a love story where a very rich and educated girl falls in love with a poor uneducated driver. A love -an act of desparation- in the hope that winter will end and bring sun shine of summer, a sunny day when you don't care about your mediocre worries about status, class and forced relations. That is what the characters in this book want. More like seeing a movie - where for couple of hours you just forget about reality and become part of a fantasy. The book ends very abruptly - with Grady high on drugs having wild time. It is thought that Capote didn't complete it. But I think there is no end to fantasy - on a sunny day you don't know and don't want to think about the next day - leave thinking about coming winter. The story is about that day.