Use your Vivek
I am a true believer in randomness. Things happen, we do not make them happen. We can only work towards it. I started writing full time for a living, three years back, on a rainy afternoon, when I turned up at DNA looking for a job and got one. The funny part is I still love it.
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barsaat ki bheegi raaton main,
phir teri kahani yaad aayee,
kuch apna zamana yaad aaya,
kuch unki jawani yaad aayee*
I am in Mysore. I have just finished transcribing an interview running into four and a half thousand words and my head is spinning. I go out for a walk and in the dazed state that I am I do not realise that it is drizzling. Five minutes and wet clothes later, reality strikes. And then I realise the beauty of the moment. Wet roads. Smell of wet earth. The shining leaves of gulmohar trees all around me with water on them. Little puddles of water on the road.
This sends me back in time to the city I was born and brought up in - Ranchi. Ranchi as the social studies textbooks of yore would have told you, was a hill station. And what is a hill station, even if its only one in the text books, without rains...and power cuts and dark clouds. Black thunder with a flash of lightening. Drops of rain. The smell of wet earth. The red gulmohar in all its glory. Ek cup garam chai. Kishore Kumar singing "rim jhim girre sawan."
Every year after two months of scorching summer when temperature would touch the early forties and stay there, it would rain. And rains would bring life back into the city. The dull and dreary faces would all be smiling. Playgrounds, which wore a deserted look during summer, would be full of children playing football in rains (And believe me, no sport can match the exhilaration of playing football in rains). The complexion of the entire city would suddenly change from rust to green.
There would be cyclists trying to avoid the pools of water that rains had managed to create and there would be children jumping in the same pools, splashing water on the passersby (cyclists included), who did not seem to mind. Hot tea and 'garam samosas' with chutney would be the flavor of the season. All the talk about the receding water level in the lake supplying water to the entire city would be replaced with how many millimeters it rained that day. Buffaloes could be seen enjoying a swim in ponds, which were dry till sometime back and were now overflowing with water.
From our eighth floor flat with farms all around, one could see grease lightening kissing the ground. And the first burst of lightening was enough to ensure a power cut. And in the evenings this would send one searching for a matchbox and a candle or a lantern. Many evenings have been spent studying in dim candle or lantern light (or improving concentration should I say). And when the rains stopped, the smell of the wet earth would come through, something that doesn't happen anymore in the midst of all the concrete I have chosen to live in (I hope RT doesn't throw me out of Mumbai for this) .
The rains in Ranchi were rejuvenating, yet there was certain anger about them. They hit the ground with a thud...a knockout punch. The romance was clearly missing.
The city I moved to for my post graudate studies, Pune, lies on the leeward side of the Western Ghats. The clouds empty themselves over Mumbai and by the time they reach Pune, the heavy rains of Mumbai have converted into a drizzle. In Pune, in the truest sense of the word, it rains, it hardly ever pours. The romance that is missing in the rains of Ranchi can be found here. And it literally sucks you in. It's the kind of rain you would want to go out in and get wet. Or go out for a walk arm in arm with your loved one under the same umbrella. And given that Pune is a city of students, it is a fairly common sight.
The rains in Hyderabad, the city I moved to make a living, like the city itself, promise to deceive, looking fairly good when they start off, but fizzle out very fast. It doesn't really rain much in Hyderabad. In fact it rains more in Telugu movies, with the heroines from Sridevi to Shreya getting wet to the welcome relief of the front benchers, than it does in Hyderabad And when it does rain, the place to go to is the Hussain sagar lake. When the first drops of rain hit the water in the lake it's a sight not to be missed out on.
My nostalgia trip ends when the mobile buzzes. "Ho gaya?" the boss asks. "Bus bhej raha hoon," I reply and hurry back to work.
*opening lines of the movie Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aayee ( a movie losely based on the relationship Mahesh Bhatt shared with Parveen Babi. He of course rewrote this script again for the Kangana Ranawat starrer Wo Lamhe)
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