It rained

Last week of May and I started crying out for rain. Blame it on the weather tracker within me. It's been used to damp weather from the beginning of June. So I told half the world I am waiting for rains, where the hell is it.

And then a friend comes up with great indignation demanding what happened to her summer. She tells me Bangalore usually gets rain only by July, which means June should have still been summer, which it anyway wasn't. So she asked half the world where the hell her summer had gone.

In school, rain always meant squelchy shoes, wet socks, dripping umbrellas, a damp desk if your seat in class was by the window. It meant cramped morning assemblies along the corridors. Keeping uniforms white an impossible task. "Games" periods got converted to English or Science or whatever else. Stolen minutes in between classes to stare out the window at rain dripping off tall blades of grass.

Loved those class rooms that looked across the football ground, the empty land beyond, bordered by the railway track, the road after that, then the airfield. The clouds would draw in, the room would darken, the teacher would pause in deference to the mighty roar of oncoming rain. And we would in silence and with a thrill rising, watch the rain coming rushing in from the horizon, over the airfield, across the road and the railway track, and take over the football ground to finally rat-tat-tat on the window panes.

It has been years. But those memories are as fresh as the rain drops beating against my window now. The rain these days has been a mere soft mist though the weather is all wind and clouds and falling trees. And every time it rains, I hear my mother's voice reminding me of what Kunjunni-maash's advice -- never miss an opportunity to watch the rain.