Rain

I’ve always been fond of rain. Maybe because the day I was born it was raining. My grandmother fought her way through a maelstrom that was a mixture of water, hail and wind. I was wrapped in a shawl and taken to the best pediatrician’s house in all of ______. As the rain lashed down, my grandmother was so preoccupied with moving through the deluge that threatened to sweep her off her feet that she didn’t stop to see whether she was holding the much awaited and highly anticipated son or the curse that a girl child is regarded in India.

Lucky for me that she didn’t because she only came to know that I was the latter when the pediatrician exclaimed that I was a really beautiful girl. Not yet a day old and I had already charmed my first guy.

Nani would always lament that she should have succumbed to the temptation and dropped me into the river that the road had turned into on her way home.

I don’t know what she was thinking but she didn’t do it. According to her she uncovered my face to take one look before she dropped me but she didn’t. She tells me that the look of pure joy that settled itself on my face as the first rain drop touched it was too much even for her to resist.

She tells me this every time I walk in out of the rain.

My skin feels alive, a shimmering being that is a part of me and yet not my own, my soul feels like its been washed with nectar, life courses through my veins.

I love the rain. I adore the smell of water mingling with the earth and turning to fluid. I love the feeling of raindrops on my skin and the touch of cool wind in my hair. Whenever I see people running away and taking shelter I want to tell them to stop, to find a puddle to splash in because you never know when you might find joy again. Pure unadulterated joy. The kind of joy that makes you see emeralds in the light of day as the rain shimmers on the leaves, it makes you see rubies on the flowers that sway on the boughs of the china rose tree and turns the violets into amethysts.

Rain in the nightfall brings peace. The kind of peace that you can only dream about. The kind of peace that is accompanied by the rhythm of the raindrops, the sound reassuring and comforting telling you that you are alone but not.

I’m sitting with my cup of warm tea watching the smoke curling up from the surface of the liquid a brief bit of warmth that is whisked away with every breath of cool wind that comes by. My minds eye sees eternal love, dancing , laughing briefly in the face of time before being swept away by the powers that be.

I can see the bark of the trees glowing like molten copper, reddish brown.

Nani waits for me, she expects me to thank her. For the tea, for her love and for the gift of life that she gave all those years ago.

I’ll do it again, like I always do, and I’ll lie to her like I always do that I love her the best. I don’t .I love the rain more.