Memoirs of rain - Part I

I am not sure how old I exactly was - must have been in my early teens or on the verge of it. I remember the khaki half trousers, the white shirt and the orange badge, the red color backpacker that didn't stay with me for long. I remember it to be a november evening, close to 5:30. I remember our school clearly and the bus stop opposite to it. I remember the deserted road that evening that was being belted by rain incessantly. I remember the two (or was it three?) boys, one of them very clearly, who were with me. We were waiting for quite sometime for the rain to stop. But it looked like that was not going to happen - You should have seen it rain in Madras to know what I am talking about. The tempestous rains have a touch of armageddon to it. Anyway, in this fine evening in question, when it was raining like there was no tomorrow - we decided to leave together and I, as usual, was supposed to tag along in someone's cycle. As I was coming out through the huge blue gate with only a polyethene sheet for cover, the rest of them got onto their bikes and told me that they will wait on the opposite side of the road. I said yes, looked back to see if the door was closed and turned around to find all of them gone. Vanished in thin air! Through the veil of rain water I could see some white and khaki specks cycling for life. I was too numb to even react - I had no money for the bus (some change wouldn't have changed anything coz there were no buses running); there were no phones at home; my house was a 25 minute walk from school on a sunny, peppy day and all I had was a flimsy polyethene cover.

Left with no other choice, I started to walk. I couldn't see straight because knives were materializing from thin air and slitting my skin. My jaws were doing rock and roll and my knees were giving away. Every inch of my academic paraphernalia was wet and the polyethene sheet was plastered to my head. I reached half way after about half an hour after which someone in the road shouted me for walking in the rain and dragged me under a tree. By divine provedence, my dad came searching for me and found me under an obsure tree amidst all the haze. He later told me the only thing that saved me from his anger was that I was white as a sheet when he spotted me. He said I looked scared - far from it, that was most the exhilirating walk of my life. There's something so liberating about walking in the rain, about the touch of rain water on your skin - makes you feel free, adventurous, more alive than ever - an inexplicable excitement that can only be felt. And that too - not those sulky, two cent showers, but real rain - the rain that will one day mark the end of this world.

Since then - I have been doing it everytime. During those rare chances in pilani while the whole insti waits in the corridors of FD-II, I walk out feeling like the king of the world. That one time during PS-1 while I got out of a running bus in mount road to get drenched in the rain for sometime and realized my blunder only when I walked like a duck, leaving a trail of rain water on the floors of the bank. And during those few uninteresting rains, fascinating snow falls and fatal hail storms.

And day before yesterday.

(Will be Continued ....)