The Rains have finally arrived in Pune and they have arrived with a bang. The roads are back to flood mode. Going anywhere in Pune now is a pain. You get up in the morning, pile on a mountain of rainy gear and drive to office hoping all the way nobody splashes you. With the kind of luck you have, it has to rain. The helmet gets all foggy. If you have specs on then your visibility is below zero. Consider yourself lucky if you reach office without hearing a single abuse or knocking somebody on the way. With the wet roads and your temporary blindness you drive slowly, thus getting wet further and reaching office grumpier than normal. You finally arrive at office partially wet in spite of all that anti-wet gear. Grumbling all the time you somehow get out the damn raincoat. You drag yourself to the desk in damp socks, wet shoes and a totally irritated mood. Good Morning ? What @#@#@! good morning. This day sucks.This season sucks. When is this rain gonna go away ?
FLASHBACK ………say 4-5 years.
You are attending the most boring lecture ever. The professor drones on and on about some stupid theory that he barely understands. He scribbles something on the board half expecting the class to copy it. You don’t even have your notebook open. Your eyes are out of the window. The rain can be heard banging at the college walls. Like a savior trying to free you from this monster called Engineering. The wind blowing from the broken window panes is refreshing. You just have to be outside. You sense an identical mood among friends (Birds of a feather do flock together 🙂 )The bell rings and half of the class is out. At least the half that sat in the corner and back benches of the class. Everybody wants to be free. You head to the canteen, where you locate an empty set of chairs. Nobody is keen on getting wet. So the chairs are squeezed together under the last remaining bit of covered area outside the canteen. Everybody orders tea. They sit there enjoying the breeze, watching the rains (and the occasional girl who happens to pass by). Life is Bliss.
FLASHBACK ………say 8-10 years.
School summer vacations are just drawing to a close. The hot summer has been utilized most efficiently playing cricket in the evenings and cards in the afternoon. The sun has been blazing away for a good two months. Part of your mind is beginning to wonder about the upcoming first day at school. You are having the perfect vacation. And it just got better. The weather has suddenly changed. It’s all cloudy and gray. A wind is howling and there is a lot of dust in the air. Its time for rain. Time for football. Everybody is back on the ground. The game starts and in the heat of the game, all hell breaks loose. The rain starts coming down in torrents. The wind now resembles a mini-gale and within no time everybody is wet. Mothers and elder sisters are howling at us from windows to get inside. Like we care. We continue to run in the fresh puddles chasing that ball.We kick, we push and we fall. Oh what a beautiful game. You can hardly see the next person but you are still running. The game continues amidst the thunder and lightning. When we finally return home, we are all soaked to our bones. And our clothes. Oh they are all caked in chikad. We resemble the pigs that roll in the mud. Moms can be heard howling at kids from every house. Spankings and wailing’s make their presence known in some. We are loving it. There is a nice warm bath waiting for you. And if you are lucky some bhajiyas. Hot garma garam bhajiyas. Oh life is wonderful. Now to just curl up and sleep.
School has started. We are all dressed up. New uniforms, shiny polished shoes and decent haircuts. We can look smart when we want to after all. And we cycle off to school. It’s a cloudy day, which suits us as we race against each other or simply ride as slowly as possible. In the evenings we cycle back home and if we are lucky, it rains. Cats and dogs. We peddle back in the rains. Zero visibility, zero brakes and our rain coats all neatly tucked inside our bags. We make it a point to cycle through every puddle, to splash each other with as much dirty water as possible. Aah rain. What would we do without it.
BACK TO THE PRESENT:
There is a set of mails in my in-box detailing the tasks to be competed today. The dull sky just makes everything and everybody seem so dull. Sighing I get started on the work for the day.
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