Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sudden Delights

Yesterday morning, the sky suddenly opened up and that too during peak of the summer! These sudden rains are extremely happy ones. Somehow I feel it comes to be with you and share your happiness than the torrential seasonal rains.

The charm is in the unexpected timing. Maybe you keep wanting something or expecting something, but they don’t happen. And all of a sudden, you don’t really expect it to happen, it does. And even your own senses are not too ready for this unexpected pleasure. But the fact that what you had been wanting happens is a huge bonus.

As youngsters, my cousin and me had rain-watching as a serious vocation. Their house had this balcony and to sit with a hot coffee and watch the rain drops falling down would be a great delight. We almost became an expert in the subject that we could tell how long the rain would be falling based on the distance between two droplets. Not rocket science it was, but the point is that we were watching it closely.

But the city life robbed this charm. The rain is more a nuisance in a place like Chennai. With an awful addiction to concretize everything we see, we deprive the earth of its lifeline and thus ours too. And the water logs all over the roads and that great smell that used to emanate out of the soil, is nowhere to be smelt. All you can smell is sewage. And you want to quickly get back to comfortable pigeonhole and stay tucked.

Me, I am kinda lucky. I have the option of watching rain. Thank goodness I chose to stay away from the crowds. And I still can relive my childhood days and the joy of rains. Yesterday, I was sleeping so missed the actual rain. But the telltale signs of rain having visited were all over when I woke up.

The leaves were greener because the rain has washed them. The sand in the beach was browner. The sea itself was calmer and the folks in the hamlet had a boat race. It started to swelter pretty soon. But the rain stayed in the mind for a much longer time.

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