India, May 3 -- What with sporadic showers cocking a snook at the summer sun poised to wage its war, the season is blowing hot and cold, much like Donald Trump's maverick moods. Taking a cue, Tweeple too are busy doing a hide and seek with hobby time. Calmness and coolness are certainly the need of the hour, what with temperatures soaring, politically and climatically. Promenades and patios have been shrinking and shrivelling up. Much in the manner of snails curling up for a siesta in their shells. Girlhood's gardens harboured a different story. Global warming's boulevards tell a different tale. How the digital age and climate change are transforming summer narratives! Childhood gardens saw a profusion of summer scents - motias, raat ki ranis and rajnigandhas. It was a summer evening ritual to rummage for the prettiest pristine white handkerchiefs with posies hand-embroidered by nanis and dadis - all for Mission Motia. All cousins congregating in the ancestral home for summer vacation would swoop down upon the jasmine (motia) plants proliferating near the garden tap. The ivory buds would be daintily plucked and deposited upon the laps of the 'kerchiefs, that were made from reams of rubia or mulmul fabric. A sight that spawned its own visual vocabulary of competition and comparison - which was whiter, the profusion of jasmines perched on the rubia rumaals or the 'kerchiefs' warp and weft of whiteness with its canvas of embroidered posies in satin stitch or lazy-daisy stitch! The collected motias would then religiously be ferried for offering and obeisance at the gurdwara down the street from the grandparents' home. An adventure that spelt its own nostalgic narrative - posies meet piety. The digital era and global warming have changed many of those yesteryear narratives. Those jasmine-scented patios are withering away under the wrath of global warming. Or those sprawling summer gardens sport a new vocabulary of downsizing - tray gardens and terrariums. The digital-age downsizing may have its distinct advantages. The shrivelling of boulevards spells newer narratives. Indoor miniature gardening is the new outdoors. Air-conditioned terrariums and tray gardens are global warming's new summer boulevards. Summer is also seeing cross-cultural and cross-continental crafts and camps catching on. Sample the Kintsugi workshops that are finding more and more takers. The Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy driving the Kintsugi classes finds resonance in Indian aesthetics and artistic values. Kintsugi is all about repairing and retouching chipped ceramics with gold finish. It's all about using golden accents to celebrate cracks, not camouflage cracks. It is an art form manifesting the wabi-sabi core philosophy of embracing flaws, of valuing imperfections. A cross-continental influence that is redefining how meaningfully our summers are spent - away from fancy locales and frills, immersed in facing flaws, fashioning flaws. The curious case of 'All That Glitters is Gold Finish'....