The sun has begun to tire us. The sweat beads have made it a habit of becoming rivulets that run down the calves. The sea-breeze is enervated and no long gives succour to the drained body. And all the messengers want to talk about is readiness. Readiness for the water-logging, for the deluge, for the horrors of another rain-cloud burst.
Mumbai is no Ramgiri, and one is not a cursed yaksha suffering the pangs of separation. But surely one is not alone in pining for the clouds, the rain-drops, the earthy fragrance as the first drops fill the nostrils and bring back remembrances of times past.
The day when one set out to walk all the way from Worli to Nariman Point as the rain fell, the wind alternately whispered and snapped, and the waves wanted to breach the barriers and choose their own natural fall. Night had fallen. No umbrella and no cover. One was there to walk, to get wet, to tire oneself feeling the rain first hit and drip its way into an embrace. By the time one had passed Haji Ali and made one’s way to Peddar Road, the shops had closed. There was just a small shop selling the last pavs, and the last cup of tea.
A short pause and one had started again straight down, turning right towards Chowpatty, and then crossing the road to walk on the strand. The waves were not exactly furious. They were not lashing. But they did protest and a couple of times drenched one walking in their path. Somewhere along that long walk, as the cars sped by, tall buildings shot lights to those below, and one jumped the puddles that formed on the footpath, a thought kept crossing the mind. It was the kind of night that one should choose to die.
But that was not exactly what one had in mind many years back. The day the rains came and one decided that the best way of appreciating the literature courses was wading in the rain rather than being stuck in a class with a mournful teacher who spoke in long sentences without a break that would relieve our collective tedium. The back gate of the college led to a street that was water-logged. Some friends with no respect for decorum and decency, which was clause 11, or was it 19, in the college handbook decided to walk down the road to the tea-shop. Maharaj-ji as the man was affectionately called would serve a hot chai. But by then the feet would have been knee-deep in rain and ditchwater, the chappals smelling foul, and the toes would have just begun incubating the germs. That was before one heard of leptospirosis, chikungunya, or even thought about death.
And then there was the time when the rains came. To the small, mining town. The one that has become so unrecognisable in its productivity and growth and development. It was then one where the clouds would hang low, the rains would come and once again tell us how green the valley really was. The haemetitic mud would become soft, the water would turn a wonderful colour, red, ochre, brown in equal quantities, and then the scent.
If only there was a way to put it in a bottle, take it with you wherever you went, and sniff your childhood back on demand. Brothers, three of us, almost feral when one looks back, would gather and run out. Little worms would come crawling out, snakes could be seen in the pond that we called the local lake, and the hills above would wear a washed look.
And then mushrooms would come up as if all it took was the rain to meet the soil. Much effort and the promise of hot, fried food would be the only thing that would get us back, drenched iron ore-red.
The remembering is broken. A phone call tells me the wait is over. The rains have come. It is raining in the suburbs and the city. It is time to go for a walk. And for all the accursed yakshas in Ramgiri and beyond, even jyeshta has brought in the messenger and may their messages reach, to seed and fruition.
Appeared in Mumbai Mirror. Read here.
