Mem­o­ries of a rainy day:

Grow­ing up in the lovely hill sta­tion of Shil­long, I remem­ber the rains. It would go on for days. And days.

With no respite. But being in the hills, we had an advan­tage in that there would never be any flood­ing. Our house, sit­u­ated on the Lachu­miere hill­top had a lovely view of a part of the town. The whole house had large French win­dows that rat­tled and shook as the rains hit the panes vio­lently; some­times so hard, that I feared we would have no win­dows left at the end of the down­pour. They sur­vived though.

We would don large gum­boots, rain­coats and go slosh­ing through the rains lov­ing every moment of it. It’s strange that as adults we do every­thing to avoid get­ting wet, but when we’re young we dance around enjoy­ing it to the fullest.

I love the rains. In Guwa­hati, when the first rains first hit, we’d make it a prac­tice (along with our neigh­bours at that time) to have an impromptu rain dance. We lived on the first floor of a lovely house, with a dri­ve­way and a huge lawn. My sis­ter, our neigh­bours (a brother and sis­ter) and I would prance around show­ing off some of our newly acquired Hindi movie moves (all thanks to tele­vi­sion), much to the annoy­ance of my mother who couldn’t fig­ure out what joy we got out of these sessions.

Wait­ing for the rains:

This year, how­ever, mom tells me over the phone the rains have not come as yet to the North East. The tem­per­a­tures have gone up and there seems to be no respite from the heat. Every year, floods in the Brahma­pu­tra are a given. This year, though, they’re fac­ing drought like con­di­tions in parts of a state, a con­di­tion unknown since the last recorded instance in 1896.

Today, I read in the papers about Megha­laya and Assam both fac­ing a severe crisis.

In Cher­ra­pun­jee (no longer the wettest place, but still extremely wet) women are walk­ing long dis­tances to fetch water. The region is los­ing its green cover and top soil. At the begin­ning of the mon­soons, five dis­tricts of Assam had flood waters rolling by, but since then there has been no rain. The gov­ern­ment has termed the sit­u­a­tion ‘drought’ like and is appar­ently wait­ing for the mon­soon sea­son to be over to make a for­mal dec­la­ra­tion. The Kazi­ranga National Park, home to 1850 endan­gered rhi­nos, has been affected greatly by this lack of rain­fall. The North East, already reel­ing under enough prob­lems, has another big obsta­cle it seems on its hands.

And down south:

In Ban­ga­lore, at least, we haven’t seen much rains as yet. There have been those driz­zles and sur­prise show­ers, but the rains have yet to hit the city hard. Though, I do pray that it’s not a repeat of what hap­pened last year when half of Ban­ga­lore was submerged.

In the mean­while, those light show­ers which imme­di­ately cool down the city are more than wel­come. Walk­ing around on MG Road the other day with Sabir and Venkatesh, we got caught in a sud­den shower. We took shel­ter under Nilgiri’s roof and then a juice shop and watched the rains for a long time.

Songs for a rainy day:

Rains also con­jures up images. Like that famous umbrella scene with Raj Kapoor and Nar­gis in Shri 420. Who can ever forget?

Pyaar hua, ikraar hua hai
Pyaar se phir kyoon dar­rta hai dil
Kehta hai dil rasta mushkil
Maaloom nahin hai kahan manzil

And my other favourite rain song is from the movie Manzil with Amitabh and Mousumi Chatterjee.

Rim jhim gire saa­van, sulag sulag jaae man
Bhi­ige aaj is mausam Mein, lagii kaisii ye agan

Asso­ci­a­tions:

- Cosy whis­pered con­ver­sa­tions
– Hot soup
– Watch­ing the rain falling from my bal­cony as I sip Earl Grey tea
– Cud­dling up with the cat and a nice book
– Hot onion and aloo pako­das (mummy!!)
– Knit­ting (pity I don’t any­more)
– Cross­word puz­zles and board games

And lastly, the quote that dri­ves me crazy:
Mom and dad to me: “You need to save for a rainy day”!