Hey friends, I really loved the response on my last story. I am glad you guys liked it. It inspires me to write more and to keep experimenting.
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| Picture courtesy- Photographed by Anirudh Mathur- on Facebook and @project_am on Instagram |
Today is about a routine day at work which was unexpectedly
changed to a wonderful trip of nostalgia. Yeah. And the drug for that was
actually the drop of rain. I live in Ahmedabad which is probably one of the
hottest cities in India. The weather in summers is so hot and dry that it
leaves you parched every minute. Exhausted and exasperated with such weather I was
carrying on with my routine of seeing patients in the afternoon. Since my room
needs darkness to enhance and enable me to see patients more effectively, I had
the blinds drawn in my room. Suddenly the counsellor came in, a petite little
girl in her early twenties with long hair with drops of water dripping from the fringe of hair
framing her beautiful round face and a few droplets on her cheeks. She had a
certain amount of happiness and satiety on her face, the one which you may see
on a face of a thirsty traveler in a desert after finding an oasis. I asked
her, “Where have you been? And what makes you so chirpy?” She exclaimed, “Ma’m,
it’s the first rains. It has started raining. I went out to soak myself in the
first rains and I am so happy”. Suddenly the mention of rains lit my face up
too. I think I too had that look of satiety on my face. I knew I wasn’t going
anywhere for the next few hours until I finished my patients and probably the
rain would stop by then, but I still had that smile plastered on my face.
I finished
seeing the patient whom I was seeing and on the pretext of drinking water, I got
up and treated myself to the pitter-patter of the rain drops on the metal ledge
of the window, opened the blinds and absorbed the freshness that the rains
brought to the exterior. The roads seemed to be enjoying the bath and the
amount of vehicles treading and the hum-drum of the traffic seemed to have
reduced. I could see the asopalav tree, swaying in the wind flapping its long
wet leaves in the first rains, as if dancing to the music that the rain drops
created. Inside the shade of the same tree, I could see a drenched pigeon
trying to find some shade and protecting itself from the rain, a little scared
or probably just hiding. Just while I was lost in this frenzy of the first
rains, I was reminded that I still have a lot of patients to see. I went back
to my seat and carried on with my job, this time with a different kind of
satisfaction beaming on my face, the satisfaction of the sign that summers have
ended, of the thought of onset of cooler days, or just of the first rains.
I know after reading so much you may think that here goes
another one, who can’t stop about the rains and will have all sort of romantic
stuff written about the rains. Actually no! I hate rainy days as much as I love
them (Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with rains). But there is no denial
that to even the toughest of us the thought of the end of summers gets to us, the
earthy, misty and intriguing smell of the wet soil gets to us, the pitter
patter of the droplets while you are protected inside gets to us, the hot cup
of tea while its chilling outside gets to us. I stepped out of the hospital and
shielded my bag in vain to protect my laptop and ran to my car and started
driving. The traffic was going slow and the to and fro movement of the wipers
on the windscreen seemed to be working as a time machine drifting me to the
experiences of the first rains in all these years. I started getting flashes of
times from my childhood, to my hostel days, to the days I used to work in
Mumbai, to those days when I was full of romance, to the days I got stuck in
the rains and so on and so forth.
I remembered how as
children we used to change into our shorts to the terrace on the 10th
floor of our building and would dance and splash in the water. How the road
leading to our building used to be waterlogged all the time and the passing bus
or car used to create waves and how we loved playing in that dirty waterlogged
muddy water. How we would be left early from the school with an announcement
that the rain is uncontrolled and to ensure we reached home safely, we were
being left early followed by our squeals of excitement as though we had won a
lottery. We would walk our ways to home, with our school bags drenched,
treading in the waterlogged streets and saving ourselves from the manholes that
never seemed to do their job (of draining water). How after reaching home, we
were coaxed to get back in the house or else would fall ill, would have to
empty our bags to find the books that we would have wrapped in a polythene bag
to save from drenching, soaking in the dirty muddy water. We would leave the
books to dry in fan making our room look like a total mess, with clothes drying
on the ceiling and books on the floor. We would wait for the rains to stop to
sail our paper boats in the water and hey, there used to be competitions for that.
How on a rainy night we would pray to keep the rains and the streets to be
waterlogged so as to get a leave from school and the first thing to do in the
morning was to check if our prayers were answered.
Also sends me to the lane when I lived in hostel and the
rains there would mean firstly shielding your room with the sprinkles of rain
water in the room drenching either your bed or your cupboard with crumpled
balls of newspaper or sheets of plastic, and then going to the roof with your
BFFs and singing the most romantic songs on the top of our voices longing for
some loved one to sing the for us. It also meant getting dirty playing some
sport like volley ball or cricket in the sludge. Also there was the worry of
drying the clothes, and not having enough of clean dry clothes to wear. It also
meant the mouldy walls of the hostel room with its mucky smell. The lines to
get hot water from the geyser and fighting for the hot pakoras (vegetable croquets)
made by the canteen guy.
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| Romance in the rain |
Rains in Mumbai were great as well. I vividly remember my
first rainy season in Mumbai, and also the very first rains with the person I loved.
For the first time I understood the romance in the rains. Bunking the class and
going to Bandstand with an army of clouds invading the blue sky, just to start
shooting the rain droplets at the most perfect timing as we reached the sea
face. Watching the waves of the Arabian Sea rise higher and higher before they
succumbed to the shore and broke themselves in the arms of the stony
walls of the sea face, and hearing the roar of the clouds as if giving a
dramatic background score to the entire scene. The greys had never looked so
beautiful. In the midst of such amazing atmosphere sitting close to the person
you love with his arms around your shoulder and munching on piping hot roasted
corn cob and sipping hot cups of coffee. Priceless!!! I could wish for that
moment to never end and go on forever. For the first time I could understand how
pages and pages would be written about romance in the rains. It was the most
secure that I had ever felt in my life in spite of the dramatic happenings of
the nature. It was the most amazing contrast that I had come across, thunder
and roaring on the outside and calm, peace and safe in the inside.
But the rains weren’t always this sexy in Mumbai. There were
times when I got stuck in a train overflowing with ladies squishing your body and screaming in your ears, stuck in midway due
to the smog and rains outside, making you scared as to would you be able to
reach home safely. There were times that due to heavy rains no cabs or
rickshaws would give you a ride and you were stuck in the road unable to walk
due to rains and long distances and stranded on a dark lonely street knowing
not what to do and shit scared. There were times that the rains and the open
gutters made the street so yucky that it would end up soiling your clothes and
you ended up working the whole day in such wet soiled clothes looking like a
piece of crap. There were days when a reckless driver unaware of the people
walking on the streets would splash muddy water all over your dress unaware of
the fact that you were supposed to give your presentation in front of the whole
class that day. But there were also days when you would go on a long drive with
your loved one just sitting and listening to music and watching the rains fall
on the windscreens and the wiper-blades wiping them off.
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| Picture courtesy- Another excellent photograph by Anirudh Mathur |
My favorite part is though the time after the rains have
stopped and the morning after that, when the smog of pollution has been washed
down. The roads, the plants, the buildings are beaming and flaunting their
squeaking cleanliness and shining with the gem like droplets of rain over them.
It seems as if God has switched on a different filter for viewing things for us
and everything seems beautiful in that light and shine. There is a different
freshness in the air and some sort of an enthusiasm which urges you towards
hope. It is a perfect metaphor for the saying that “After Darkness shall come
the Light”.
Well, good and bad experiences but I wouldn’t agree with
someone who says they absolutely hate the rains, although I do make that statement
quite a lot of times, but the mention of rain does manage to bring a smile on
our faces. It’s the sheer genes in us that come from our farmer ancestors that
make us consciously or subconsciously relieved that the rains have arrived, the
summers have ended, the season of fertility (pun intended) has come and everything
would be suddenly be squeaky clean and fresh. This is my story of nostalgia
about rains. What’s yours???
