When Wringing Wet Memories

As anticipated the down pour was heavy. It seems like; it was a plan to sink my ships of “historic value”. The ones which were made from the pages of ancient civilizations and world wars. Yes I’d found my toys in the note books of my brothers. No sooner it stopped raining I took my “Ferrari”, “Lamborghini” and “Cadillac” one by one to the muddy puddles. I drove them splashing through the water logged .When one gets ruined; I will take it to the garage and will start making the other. New models were generated in my factory where the raw materials were much cheaper in the form of stem of coconut leaves. With the emergence of industrial revolution it got transformed to cycle tyres.

As a shower of blessings it rained once more. But this time I felt a different aroma with the rain. The scent of new clothes, bags revealed a new world of letters to me.
There I learnt new stories of rain from different faces. As days passed I realized the scent of rain was changing. The odor of the undried clothes made it intense. I found it hard to tolerate. Seasons passed like a swift current. Summer came to my doorstep. It rained at dusk. My granny advised me not to go outside as the serpents were much fascinated by the smell of mud. Covering her head with a towel which she always used to put on her shoulder, she lit the lamp in the “thulasi thara”. I felt the freshness of the plants sitting in the courtyard.

The radio news in the evening gave the prediction of monsoon hitting our parts in the near future. It rained heavily after two days. The serials in Doordarshan too told the stories of rain. Situations were so horrible when I was studying for the examinations at late nights. The toads made a walk around my legs. Since the floor was wet I didn’t have to make any artificial arrangement to kill my sleep. Giant frogs echoed the chapters which I was reading a bit louder.

Playing cricket and football in the ground filled with rainwater was really fun added to my childhood. There were few roly-poly guys who always become victims to the tactics of the beefy guys. They can be seen with bandages covering their hands quiet often. The slippery ground was really dangerous and I would always rely on my own tactics by staying away from either of these people. Playing our own style of field hockey is another kind of glory of the past. Different kinds of sticks varying in sizes and hardness in the muscular hands of guys who were normally older than me is always a fearsome sight for me. But I used to put them away from me by applying some exclusive and ‘deadly’ strategies. I will always aim the fresh cow dung cakes by keeping the ball near my side itself. Though there were no recessions at that time, there were situations when the rubber balls made way to plastic bottles (kudos to brand “Ujala”) and similar kind of stuff. Before it rained for the first time, in the month of May, I had learnt the skill of fishing with the fishing rod and it was the best way in which I found enjoyment, a good way to spend the idle hours. The sound of rain at midnight added a smile to my sleep, a ray of hope for a good catch, the very next day.

Every time it rained it had washed smithereens of my childhood along with it and gradually dragged me to the prime of my life. There was a time when I felt embarrassed before the guest in my home where I felt the wetness of my home once again. As I stepped into youth I tried to stretch my legs to touch the tip of the bed to make sure that I was growing. The sound of water dropping on the copper and steel vessels at the wooden roof added rhythm to my dreams in the sleep. Dreams, many dreams; colorful, aromatic, and sometime abstract too. Some may go wild and lead me to suffocate while some leads to a kind of eruption, a kind of feeling which I’d never experienced and leaves a bunch of questions in me. Suddenly I awakened from a deep sleep and realized that it’s not the lava that made me wet this time, but the water which overflowed from the vessels .In the half asleep night I heard someone climbing over my head.

After many years when it rained once again it deluged lot of desires in me. The rain made no difference for us kissing each other when we walked in a less spacious umbrella. The wet long hair was blown to my face by a vehement storm. The feeling of holding a glass of red wine in hand and sharing it with the most lovable person of yours is something which words can’t explain. A cool breeze was coming from the small gap between the window panes. Water on the glasses gave a languish image of the routes through which we are going. I am not sure that the smell of cosmetics or the natural odor made me uncomfortable. I found someone near to my face, close to my lips. I could feel it in the air. In to the depth, towards a passion, to achieve something I buried everything I had earned and searched for that unknown world. Though the wind was chilly it couldn’t prevent my hands from becoming wet. After a prolonged fervor which disembogued like a calm river, I saw the glass getting wet once again .I wiped it out .Later in the pale blue light, I realized that there were no glasses for me to hide the water coming like rain in the form of tears.