Rain And I

Rain and I down memory lane

An affinity to rain comes to us naturally, it is as if the water molecules that comprise the majority of us feel a longing within themselves to communicate with their free to roam counterparts out and about amidst the downpour accompanied by that scent that I can only describe as “that scent”, the one you smell during and after a generous rain.

I have many memories that revolve around this season of monsoon and the many raindrops that it consists of.

. The first one in the saga was narrated by my Nani Ammi, she told me of the days of her youth back when she could do sajda without any problems, in those days the season of monsoon actually used to be a season and not a weekend like we witness nowadays.

The rain was something constant throughout the day and night the only thing that changed was the intensity. Back then, she said her family used to gather in the yard and she used to make pakodas and Chola for everyone to feast upon while taking in the humid yet cool fumes that emanated from the not so concrete ground.

. The school to which I went was located in a place where the sewage systems were, let’s say “not so perfect”. In the mid monsoon when the downpour spells raged to soak the roads, our school and the streets surrounding it used to suffer the maximum damage, the floodgates would go loose and what you could see was something no less than river Indus flowing out from the Himalayas growing with every second, the only thing different was that our river Indus used to be sewage mixed with the rain water, yet the intensity of the flow was astonishingly similar. I remember vividly always asking a junior of mine (when we used to watch the flood unfold)

“to janab aaj aap tayr ke jayenge ya tayr ke jayenge?”

God save our sewage systems.

. We all have taken a shower in the rain at some point in our lives, so this time my cousin and I decided to take it up a notch. We were off to pray asr at a masjid that’s only a block away from our house. By the end of the prayer, the outside world had decided to take a nap for some reason as it was pitch grey, not black, there was a very subtle but fine distinction to the colour and we knew what was coming.

It were as though Noah’s ark would show up at any moment, probably the hardest rainfall I have seen in years. Everyone stayed in the Masjid until further notice, “race lagaoge” my brother said, and he had that spark in his eye, we knew this would be different, “it. Is. On”

What I could only describe as a whiplash of water was that which followed, our run in total lasted only 12 seconds, but at the end of it we were soaking wet in the complete sense of the phrase. Even our noses and ears were invaded by the intense rain as we had difficulty catching our breaths. What I can say is this, walking on water isn’t that difficult, and you can experience scuba diving if there’s enough rain.