Rain, Rain, Come Again

Being born and brought up in the cloud-infested state of Meghalaya, I didn't have much of a liking for water drops from the heavens. It pours and pours incessantly for days at a stretch, with short breaks for a couple of hours at the most (probably only to replenish the humid stock from the Bay of Bengal). The clouds were omnipresent, every season of the year. We fervently prayed for the sun's radiance. It was therefore we kids, brought up in the Khasi, Jaintia and the Garo hills could never relate to the fanfare associated with the arrival of rains in the rest of the country.

It was four long years ago, when I had first stepped out from my hilly Shangri-la to the scorching plains of northern and central India that I could first comprehend the relief and jubilation associated with the phenomenon. After months of merciless insolation and dry hot winds, the advent of droplets of dihydrogen monoxide from a mackerel sky is pure bliss. The aroma of wet earth (something new to my olfactory receptors). The otherwise dusty and polluted city wearing a scrubbed look. The mercury dipping. And I sing Rain, rain, come again...