Just saying

At 8 a.m. yesterday, I was spoilt. Sprawled in a large comfortable bed, leaning back on a pile of pillows, curtains on three sides of the room pulled back to let in views of the Kerala backwaters alternately gilded by cloud-broken sun and stippled by needles of rain. I pulled out my new X-Mini, plugged it into the laptop and let rip with Creedence Clearwater Revival. John Fogerty’s freight train rasp on “Have you ever seen the rain”. Freeze frame.

like angels on a Saturday night

Half past six on a Monday evening, back in office, trying to clear three weeks’ backlog in two days. Piles and piles of files, check-lists, reminders, the usual.

Then I realise that if I’m charging my iPod, I might as well play something off iTunes. A new friend on Facebook posts a link to Masiakasaurus playing an extended version of my all-time favourite guitar song.

And as if on cue, the heavens open up with a roll of thunder. A window flies open and the earth-slaking skin-waking breeze reaches in to chill my fingers.

Wake up, chillun. It’s raining into the city, it’s raining into the night.

The pied crested cuckoo

I saw the fan-shaped cloud around half past 2 yesterday. A shadow of hope, up there in the vault of a blazing sky. So I asked the ‘gunman’ (because he was nearest, see?), ‘Looks like there’s a chance of rain, eh?”

To which his considered answer (after first clutching his gun tighter, in case the cloud was a security threat) was ‘That’s a cloud’.

Quite. Very helpful, with the temperature up in the mid-40s (that’s Celsius, Mr. Y Doodle) and the furnace breeze lifting lazy clouds of dust from the roadside. I was out from 7 in the morning to beat the heat. Fat chance. The sun was a hammer well before 9 o’clock, regardless of shades and hat and wet towel and regular sipping of water,. By the time I got back at 4 in the afternoon the back of my neck was throbbing and my skin felt like it had been toasted.

But that was yesterday. When I woke at a quarter to 6 this morning, the room was unusually dark. I ran (well, almost. Cut me some slack here) outside. Oh blessed day! Clouds from one side of the horizon to the other, shades of grey, birds quieter in the trees, that little hush that comes before it pelts down, and faint upon the air the smell of wet earth.

And the added pleasure of being proven right on my prediction yesterday, of knowing Things About Weather even though I'm a city slicker.

But only a faint drizzle so far, the kind that barely darkens the earth and leaves an inverted shadow of the trees upon the ground below where the diffident raindrops cannot reach. Bring it on, Rain Dude! Don’t give us a teaser and a no-show! Come ON!

Update: 24 hours later, it STILL hasn't rained. Haven't these guys heard of Truth in Advertising?

* The pied crested cuckoo is known in North India as the 'chaatak', which, according to Indian myth, sits with its mouth open waiting for rain to alke its thirst. Silly twit, but then, it IS a cuckoo. Me, I've discovered Red Bull with watermelon juice. And a spot of Old Monk.

Alap esskooj maadi ..

Some people like the rain.

Some are ambivalent ...

Hnothon par se sarak gaya hawa ka libaas

bheeg gayee yaadein, bheegi aankhein.

Kahin utree naa namee aur thodi door tak.
In baarishon ke mausam mein
bas dil hee sookha rah gaya.

Not (I hasten to add) that it rained in Calcutta last night.

**** ****

Thoughts, cloudy

Breakfast looking out over the rain-stippled pool. A sudden explosion of parakeets. One merges with the crown of a neem tree. Two perch on the stone façade of the next building, clinging half-way up the man-made cliff.

Mid-morning. Looking out over Nehru Park. The weather’s achingly beautiful. A soft rain. Just right for coffee and a smoke by the window while “Bobby sings the blues”. But I lack the time for either.

On a glistening road while the tyres whisper to themselves. Rain in my breath, and on the sidewalks marigold beds gleam through the grey air.

The sun seeps out. Slow sleepy afternoon with the hint of a breeze in the ticking leaves, small distant noises that highlight the silence, a smell of dust and drying rain, the murmur of voices in the next room. Fighting sleep. And memories.

**** ****