Romancing the rains

Cool breeze, drizzles to downpours, flooded roads, paper boats, cloudy skies, chilly mornings aah! Rainy season is back. I loved rainy season from the time I was a kid, it could mean a school holiday, and I loved that possibility so much. I fondly remember a day when I went to school to find it closed due to heavy rains. Drenched, but with my rain coat on, and 2 rupees in hand, I walked-in to ‘Cash & Carry’ a greeting card & fancy gifts store. Surviving the AC in the shop in my wet clothes, I bought a lovely bookmark which is still in one of my books. I’ve never been a fan of summer. It meant scorching heat & power cuts. There was no romance in the hot afternoon air – only sunstroke. But, rain was full of romance – a long drive, a hot mug of coffee were enough to put a smile even on a hardcore pessimist.

Every rainy season I looked forward to spend a day doing what I loved. Early morning I would go to Birla Mandir (located at the top of a hill in the centre of the city), just before the city awakes, stand there in the drizzle and watch the city come to life. Then I would go home and snuggle up on the couch with a good book. I preferred classics – ’love to go back in time to horse drawn carriages and cigars, to bowler hats and telegrams. ‘Sherlock Holmes’ was my favorite of the season especially ‘The Hound of Baskervilles’. With rain pouring away, locked in a room, I would start my tour of the moor, with Watson and Holmes for company. No matter how many times I read that book, hearing the baying of the hound, would still send chills down my spine. Once back from saving Henry Baskerville, I would pull on my jacket, walk to a road side ‘chat bhandar’ to have hot pani puri (an Indian delicacy). With my stomach full, I would ride out towards the out-skirts of the city, far from the maddening crowd. I’d stop my bike near a road side tea stall, have a tea, take a small stroll and come back home.

Sometimes, I’d open a Ruskin Bond book – Landour Days, Book of Nature or The India I love. His description of nature and his ability to romanticize even the most mundane of daily life is just beautiful and heart warming. Reading his books was like going out on a walk with him and I’m glad I could through his books. Sometimes, I’d read poetry of William Wordsworth or Robert Frost:

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the tramp of hoofs
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks
At the twisted brooks;
He can feel the cool
Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,
And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighboring school
Come the boys,
With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;
And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.

In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard’s tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land
The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise
From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes
Seem to thank the Lord,
More than man’s spoken word.

Near at hand,
From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees
His pastures, and his fields of grain,
As they bend their tops
To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.
He counts it as no sin
That he sees therein
Only his own thrift and gain.

With coffee in my hand I finish the books and I’d sit back, look out through the balcony watching the rain and reflect: Is this not life? To lose sense of the past and the future and just be in the moment, in the only reality – now? Yes, this is life. Living in the very moment conscious of everything around in the only life we can ever know.

Any day would be dull without music. By the evening I would switch to John Denver’s Annie’s song or This old guitar and call the day off with a tour on his dreamland express.

This year the rain is back again and its time to go out and lose myself.