Monday, August 4, 2008

Why did it rain?

I came out of the office in hurry. Hurrying for nothing other than avoiding rain. When I was in the courtyard a woman was smiling to a colleague. When she smiles her face shrinks as if someone had pulled her facial skin at nose. All of a sudden uncountable folds appear in her face, first time I saw her I thought she was crying.
The sky was almost expressionless, the clouds were heavy as if they were theatre artists behind the curtain whose turn was next and the act before theirs had just ended. I only said heavy, they were not black. It looked as if it was a face of a child who had stopped crying a little earlier and the tears had dried on her cheek. Everyone was hurrying in the streets except for the street children who didn’t even care if it was already raining.
I saw a small ripple disturbing the sleeping puddle. It was raining but then there were no further drops. In a matter of minutes I was inside a bus holding the novel I am reading these days. Soon the bus was crowded and a woman stood behind me holding the longitudinal bar on the ceiling. She kept pushing her handbag behind me i.e. between my back and the seat. I thought she was having problem holding the bag while holding the bar as well yet I wondered why didn’t she slid its ears through her arm. It would have been much easier but for some reasons she didn’t. I was feeling awkward and uncomfortable with her bag cushioning me. Then again she kept working on her bags, sometime she kept something inside it and sometime she was taking something out. I didn’t know what she was doing but didn’t like it either, she was disturbing me. I wanted to look at her but I was so involved in the book that I didn’t want to take my eyes off it. Then I remembered something rather silly. When I was a child, my grandmother used to tell me and my brother story of a witch who used to poke young men from behind so that they would turn around and see into her eyes. The witch will then hypnotize the young men and killed them. It was so funny that I remembered this story there at that situation and coincidentally I didn’t turn around to look at her, though I was so irritated. The rain had already started but I thought I could still get home without opening the umbrella until I actually got down at my station.
When it rains I spoil my clothes like a child. I always end up painting my trousers with tiny dots of mud. My friends say I walk fast and I raise my foot too high which make my trousers suffer during rain and ultimately mummy has to suffer cleaning them.
An old man was walking on his bare foot in the disgusting street which looked like a field being prepared for planting the paddy saplings. The old man was completely wet from top to bottom. The old man stooped and he supported himself from falling face first with a stick. The stick was made up of fir wood and had a handle tilted against its length so that it was easy to hold. The old man was mumbling something, talking to himself. I wanted to over take him but I wanted to listen what he was talking. He was saying God must have been angry with him for it rained only when he was in the street and had forgotten the umbrella. He said he was sure of this and believed someday gods will be happy with him again but he worried by the time god becomes happy he might die. He stopped at a point and looked at the sky which was clear now. He said “Are you satisfied now? See I am completely wet and I have also lost my slippers”. He complained to himself that it rains once he is out on the street and stops soon after he is completely wet. He wondered what had he done to displease the rain god. At one corner we parted ways. I thought I had an expression of a dim smile without any change in my lips but only a little brightness in my eyes. I wondered how many people would have thought that it rained just to drench them.

2 comments:

Keshi said...

as usual u made u made me think. even I complain abt tha rain sometimes..when it drenches me and my shoes feel like a mini river :)

but thru this post, u gave Rain the respect it so deserves!


Keshi.

Bla said...

I respect rain, too. :) Except when I'm on vacation.