Its monsoon in my home state! Or, that’s what we call it out of habit. The spirit of monsoon now, is nothing like the fortunate beings of Kerala once enjoyed. Monsoons these days have become simply lousy and unpredictable. Well, considering its predictability elsewhere, Keralites can still call themselves fortunate. I believe every single being, who had spent a few monsoons in this Gods Own Country, has a say or two of their monsoon tales.
Driving back home after an unusual head cracking day of work and worries, with chores awaiting me back at home, a drop of rain falls splat on my wind shield, its stayed staring at me for a second and then slowly slid down and disappeared among the other splatters that followed. Soon, so many of them joined the slide making it hard for me to guess where they got lost in the down pour. Lost in the tracks of the drizzling rain drops, falling hard on my windshield, I remembered how, once on a rainy day, my precious collection of pearls “conserved” in an empty face cream tin broke open in a fight with my cousin, scattering the pearls all around. My poor cousin ended up having a gorgeous imprint of all my incisors and canines on her skin, with a complementary injection for TT. I assure you I have absolutely no memory of any royal treatments I received on that. The cars outside were lined up in the inevitable traffic jams of late evenings in the techno park city. Their honking and swishing, past the potholes splashing muddy waters at the wayfarers broke my reverie and along with that the bubble of guilt that shows up every time I think about the pearl war. I was just six then, an age when reason and emotion were not such good friends.
Caught up in the evening traffic of office –leavers in the city of Kazhakootam, I was distracted by a crowd of school kids making their way through the rain, holding umbrellas but still drenched in the rain. It is June, the time when our schools reopen. It always used to be the 2nd of June till high-school and the 2nd of May since high school. My memories flashed back to the days when, in threes and fours we would cram under one umbrella. In one tight hug we would walk through the momentary streams on the roads that came in as bonus with the rain.
Reaching home from work, amongst the plans and preparations for the rest of the day and the days after, I watched the heavy down pour outside, flooding the craters and potholes on our pathetic, traffic- ridden NH and the by-routes in Kazhakootam. Here people turn hydrophobic during monsoon and prefer not to wet their feet in the rain streams (but in vain). For this, we owe special thanks to the “expertise” of the natives and the authorities in maintaining the garbage and sewage disposals.
Back at home, in my village, when it rains, the cool breeze and captivating aroma of wet mud would mark the start of endless days of shower. The coconut pits get filled with muddy rain water. As kids, we would do the ring-a- ring-a roses around the pits of coconut saplings and in the final lapse of it, plunge in to the pool. Unlike the identically aligned, clear-cut plots of houses we see in the city, where nobody bothers anybody else and everyone minds their own businesses, my homes in the village stood on enormous plots, with large front and back yards, with cultivations of all types of crops and trees. We had lots of space for our monsoon adventures. We used to make paper boats, load it with flowers and gravels and sail it across the rain streams. After the rain, shaking the goose berry and the drumstick trees with its fern like leaves for gentle showers of drain drops and watching the most beautiful phenomenon of nature, in the forms of rain bows were the fascinations of my childhood monsoons. We roamed in the rain free of illnesses of any sorts and absolutely no restriction from our parents. As a teenager, I best enjoyed my monsoons, lazy and cozy indoors reading fiction. In the evenings, I kept myself engaged with something hot to peck at, a cup of coffee/ tea and a melody in the back ground. At nights, if the rain had not wrecked the power supply, a charming romantic or a blood curdling horror movie to watch. Exam eves and nights or a “restricted weekend”, (weekends we were not allowed to go home) at hostels, when it used to rain I and my roomies used to sit cuddled inside our blankets sharing sweet and sour gossips about everything above the graves and under the stars, share the nostalgic memories at home, especially the cuisines each of our moms were experts in, and how we all used to have so much fun with our folks even with the shouting matches and raging wars at home with our sibs. Awesome days of life!
It is sad that we don’t get to see or enjoy many of the things that brought mirth and merry to our souls once. The office wall never lets in even a whisper of the rain outside. It is always the refrigerated cubicle climate we have inside. It is strange, just to sit there and watch the rain with no adventures or the enchanting smell of mud. What we get to see around is that the umbrella companies are doing good business. After all, it’s not just the old archetypal black umbrellas alone in the run for the “rain shields”. They umbrella fantasies have out grown the tradition and purpose and have become more of a part of the accessory list. They now come out in different colors and patterns along with convenient sizes, two and three folds and even capsule sizes. The old, grand dad stuff is in trend too, these days. For those who can’t carry an umbrella around can wrap themselves up from head to toe in rain suits of, again, any color and convenient sizes. I guess all these are part of being in a matured, more serious professional world. Or may be its just my perceptions of having entered an entirely different stage of life and I hope that the children still do enjoy the rains. The regret is when being in this world make us miss another one out there so badly. Even though the nature of seasons towards us and ours towards the seasons have derailed a lot, I wish we catch up with all that is left and find some time for the seasons, especially the rains, so that we have ample share of these sweet and pleasing experiences for the generations to come.
Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won't feel like watching. - Fran Lebowitz
