There is something about the rains.....This is a statement Vidisha must have heard countless times uttered from my mouth....Yes, there are some who are summer's children and there are some who like a good chill...but me...I am a rainman.....lolz...not the Dustin Hoffman kinda rainman kind of man....but rather a person who loves the rains.....
Rains make me happy....elation is wrote large on my face...it makes me forget the horrors of the hot scorching summer......Rains to me are the tears of God....which clean the earth....and clean our souls too.....Heavy words....you say....nah!! Am not in a philosophical mood....
The school bell about to ring at 3:30 PM....and the thunder claps ringing in synch with the school bell....the mad rush to the cycle stand to get the cycle....and then deliberately waiting for a few minutes more for the rains to crash on earth.....so that one can get wet....This for me is one of the best memories from my school days.....Living in Cuttack lying bang in the path of the South Eastern Monsoons.....rains seldom played truant when I was a kid.....I used to get wet daily when returning from school....during monsoons and the excuse I had each time....was that I was on a desolate piece of road and it started raining suddenly, so I could not hide anywhere...and got wet...Once I got wet, I thought it would be unwise to take out my raincoat from my school rucksack as I did not want my books to get wet....My mother never used to say anything more, because I used to pucker my face and repeat, I wanted to save my school books.....what mother would say anything more... The added advantage of the getting wet was a cup of piping hot tea....courtesy my mother.....
I was never a sportsperson but nevertheless still remember the neighborhood football matches which always became more interesting once it rained....the sludge..the mud....the dives in the mud...the pain and the ecstasy of scoring the goal....those were the rainy days of school.....
College brought with it...the first strokes of freedom.....of love...and love is always enjoyed best with a shower of rain....who will disagree with this statement.....I remember my girlfriend during those days loved the rains too ...bunking college and walking down the indoor stadium road hand in hand.......The first rain of the season, the first love of my life, the first innocent peck with the rains pattering on our faces....Oh!! so romantic......Life was so innocent then.....
Then I went to a God forsaken place called NOIDA...where it probably rained for 4 days in a whole year.....with a couple of those days in the winter...The temperatures used to go below 5 degrees each time it rained....I liked the freedom that NOIDA brought to me...but nevertheless missed my college friends and of course the rains a lot.....Then I met a girl over there...and we became good friends....we used to talk to each other for hours in office and sometimes after office too...but both of us had never ventured out together on anything remotely resembling a date.....it used to be always with the whole gang that we went out with...
Then one cold winter Sunday afternoon....all of a sudden the rain God decided to come visit NOIDA...Almost six -seven months had passed since this girl and me had struck upon a mutually benefiting friendship.....Don't get any idea's....by mutually benefiting I mean we were each other’s sounding boards....we just used to say everything that was troubling us in our separate lives....and the other just had to listen.....Okies...I am diverting from the story......It rained that afternoon in NOIDA and continued drizzling well into the evening and the temperatures dipped...The girl called me up and said she was very low and wanted to talk with me....but she said she could not talk with me over the phone as all her roommates were there and she wanted to meet with me....I asked her smilingly......whether this was our first date...and she said..."Shut Up, don't get any ideas and meet me Yaar...I need to talk with my friend" Hmm...what could I do....I trudged out into that cold winter night albeit reluctantly.....We met and decided to take a walk...We knew we liked each other...but did not want to ruin our friendship by confessing our feelings.....that meant...we were very formal with each other....no we used to abuse each other with the choicest expletives....by formal I meant...we kept a distance of more than 60 cms....when we were together....but today we were alone....for the very
first time........We walked on and on and she talked what was troubling her minds...then it happened....Yes..it happened.....Our first touch
Our finger tips wet with rain on them touched each other.....it was just a caress......it was as if by mistake they had touched each other....and both of us were scared as we had crossed our self imposed limit....and almost immediately both of us blurted sorry.....The rain was drizzling and it was getting colder...Both of us were completely drenched by now and shivering like leaves..... Then all of a sudden a mad biker appeared out of nowhere and came speeding towards us.....I instinctively clutched her hands with mine and pulled her away from the path of the speeding bike....Our fingers had touched again...but this time...she did not say sorry neither did I offer one.....The papers declared the next day that the temperature the previous evening had dropped to 1 degrees Celsius because of the rains... That winter rain is probably the best memory of the rains for me from NOIDA.....
If you are wondering, why am I talking about the rains in the month of November....it’s because, down south in Chennai....the rains come only in November....and it’s been raining off and on for the last 1 week.....I make it a point to get wet every day....but something’s missing...I am not enjoying the rains...this year....I wonder Why??
