ON 'RAIN'

It rained here today. Started sometime around 5:45-6:00 am, and that got me frustrated because I was at home and I had classes recommencing from today, and my first class was at 8, which meant that this rainfall could spoil the whole show and I could miss a couple of classes because that’s how buses over here work. And considering I’m someone who’s always hated the rain, always finding a reason to complain about it, I thought my mood could be no better the whole day, what with wet clothes, and wet spare clothes and a wholly wet me.

I guess I thought wrong.

It didn’t rain the fifteen minutes I took to go to the bus-stop nearest to home, it didn’t rain the first half-hour of my journey (that ought to have been done in half the time, but got stretched) and then it began. I liked the first few minutes, when nothing crept inside the window to find my clothes or my glasses, but then I found that this wind was bad, sort of antagonistic, and all it wanted to do was to act against me, and the rain speeded up, got my right sleeve wet in no time at all, and I felt grumpy, really grumpy. I looked out the window, wondering if I’d be sane if in case I tried to curse the rain, something that can’t hear me, (helps if you’ve been cursing the world for as long as I’ve been: deaf ears do nothing to you) and that sort of made me see the big picture. White noise. Streamlines of flow that are actually distinct drops. Wow, this piece of shit was making me poetic! I smiled. I smiled, not because I enjoyed the rain, which is a rare occasion (Done that before, hence ‘rare’). I smiled because I thought of you.

I wished this girl were here. I know I did nothing but see the tiniest of signs of a rain-lover, but I guess I have this mind that’s potent enough to magnify by a thousand times, and in it you were this peacock (I know peacocks are male, but I don’t know if peahens dance in the rain) who can’t stay inside when it rains, who needed just half a moment to spread your tail-feathers and dance around, frolic in the air, and I thought that this rain could be your cure, something that can bring you out of the most devastated states of mind, causing true happiness every single time it came, and that made me glad, that made me feel really appreciative of this thing that I’ve hated for so long, because it’s strong enough to gladden your day, something that I found only sunshine to be capable of, because I’ve never thought about anyone but me, and sunshine, even the most terribly hot ones, always manage to make me happy, thinking about clear skies, cool winds, energetic running, lots of sweat, tiredness that’s bliss. I guess that’s my booze.

I looked up to the sky again. This wasn’t a steady rain, it was worse than intermittent, I could see a lot of clear patches all around, but there was also this really dark portion in the sky that suggested ages and ages of downpour to come, but surprisingly, I saw nothing but the blue sky that crept out of some places, and I found that amazing. Amazing, because it’s weird how I, how one can be nothing but optimistic even in the grumpiest of moods, how I can’t imagine a scenario turning worse than what it is now. I didn’t know how the wind was blowing, I didn’t even care to see if that space was opening up or closing down, if that was the calm I felt yesterday or a calm to come, all I felt was a second’s relief that this wasn’t going to last forever, after all. It’s foolish, if you look at it in one way, because it’s like I’m trying to alter something that’s going to happen anyway by believing otherwise, and that depressed me, that, to me, was similar to religion, to superstition, and I thought for a split second that John Mayer was right all along when he posed the question of, “Is there anyone who ever remembers changing their minds from the paint on a sign?” and when he sang,

“We’re never going to beat this

if belief is what we’re fighting for...”

Nevertheless, I did get completely drenched, and dirty (potholes, mud everywhere, “isn’t love like that?”, yeah I remembered everything) but I didn’t feel even a bit cold (I’m clearly lying here, but it’s the truth in an ‘inside’ sense) I felt warmer, rather, as though every drop of rain that collected on me turned to a drop of heat and I felt like I was walking in the sun, where everything’s dry and everything is warm, everything is happy and there’s no fear at all. I looked inside and smiled. I guess that’s what you could do to me.

I thought of writing this as a poem, because I felt that a write-up could dampen the whole lot of it, but I guess that’s how I felt I was perfectly in place, at home, here. Because ‘damp’ was exactly what I was looking for.