All night it is rain that has been playing an orchestra as it falls on a plastic shed my next door neighbor has erected just the other day to save a baby plant from the fire-breathing sun. The rain has splashed against my window glass pane and made a pointed rhythm. The faint light that falls from a far-off street light has focused from time to time a smoky smudge on the pane.
The forest in the distance around a burial ground produces a collective uninterrupted rushing sound as rain strikes hard against Sal and Segun trees.
There has been no thunder, no rumble, no breezy wind; only some occasional flashings that light up the tops of palm trees streakily.
A steady gush of downpour has held the entire night captive.
The sound of rain is such that makes me stay awake the whole night. It is a sound that makes one go back to the days of childhood memories.
The low-lying lane of mine was submerged by knee-deep water following some smart showers as big ponds surrounding the locality overflowed. One of them was my grandfather’s. Straying into our garden some koi and shingi and magur was a regular monsoon time surprise element. The base of Debdaru a shoal of koi lodged at! Among the reedy plants of Nine-o-clock, shingi and magur danced around!
Such a flooding water that stirred into ripple now and then even by a touch of mild post-rain breeze was a temptation to float paper boats on it into its slow current. There was no sailor, only floater. Paper boat’s smooth sailing or getting stuck to some cluster of grass or stone chips was the delight or despair what mind was occupied fully with. The safe journey of paper boat was the sole wish. How simple was the life and its needs!
We are bound to grow up. It is the way of Nature. So the wistfulness over Woh kagaz ki kashti gives way to a dreamy Rimjhim Rimjhim where an Anil Kapoor with a pounding of heart was chasing around a Monisha Koirala in the labyrinth of a glass house that was awash with a heavy rain. The spraying of droplets off the roof made their yearning all the more passionate; and their skin, wet.