A hundred times and many more, I would always, always choose to sit idle alone on a bench looking across a stretch of grassland making sounds like rubbing palms against each other. On somedays may be a river bank bench and a green river full of plankton, moss and algae and the orange sun about to touch the horizon.
Sometimes when it rains I like hearing the drops dancing on our tin roof and the smell of garlic and onion being fried for tonight’s dinner in my neighbours house. At times I recall of the night when a centipede and more crawled down from under the gap at the door for access inside the room from the heavy pouring in the garden during monsoon.
Rain, the lovely companion to my childhood and adulthood. I recall of the days I have happily smelled more and more of the petrichor before and after the storm clouds burst on our window pane. I went to the terrace accompanied by my beloved cat, with whom I drenched that evening. Cats don’t like to get wet but mine was a special one. She loved the touch of water.
My grandfather would tell me to get wet in the rain to heal my summer rash. I would and then it would be gone within a day. I remember the times when I used to stand at the balcony bigger than all our rooms where the rain lashed with the blow of the wind. I would step on the water on our red colored floor and walk to a drier area to observe my footprints. Sometimes o would see grey clouds travelling towards us with the intention of more rain during summer thunderstorms.
It doesn’t hailstorm in my city now. Global warming has caused a lot of damage. As a kid I was really younger and that was my only memory of one single day during my childhood when here was a hailstorm and pieces of ice barged into our extended windows. I was so excited. After many many years when I shifted to the northern part of our state, the foothills of himalaya I encountered more of it. My fellow roommates and I would collect the reminiscent hails from the storm like pearls from an oyster. And when the rain followed we would leaveour buckets outside to collect the cold water from rest of the night. We wouldn’t use it otherwise but to water the plants in the garden.
Rain and I have so much memory. Of walking through a highway amidst a forest zone, with the risk of elephants or leopards popping out from nowhere but I still would care because the wine wouldn’t support my fair sense of judgement. I would still go out in the pouring rain, on the barely visible road and walk through it. The fresh water on my face and the smell of the forest on both the sides.
Back during my school days when the pond near would flood and bring out all the fish onto the flooded streets, we would drench out black shoes and white socks in the water and return back homewards; being careful not to step on a fish if we would stop one. Sometimes we would kick the water on to each other and that has now all become a part of my memory.
The showers, the storm, the rain- all very fascinating, it reminds me of so many other things. That the water doesn’t accumulate for long but flows away. It is not here to stay. No one can tame water. It carries away with it all bagages of thoughts , leaving behind memories that I have retained through my childhood and my current mid twenty era.
Sindhura 