Drenched

A rainy day in Shillong is not just about the downpour. It creates stories and anecdotes that wouldn’t happen if it was not for the rain.

In school, the rain would slam onto the courtyard and the corridors would be splashed in no time. With my kind of luck, it rained especially when I was in my track-suit [on the days we had aerobics], and much to my mom’s horror I’ll go back home literally brown with mud and water.

The rain brought about interesting games, like the one where we pull each other along the corridors like a sledge. The gymnasium used to be open at times and it was a hall of noise literally. There were these stacks of desks at the end where kids used to literally climb up and down and everyone is having his lunch everywhere.

Rain meant the building was cramped for space and with students running around and emerging from every nook and cranny, there was bound to be the usual bumping, which would evolve into a full-fledged fight. I was one of those guys who saw a lot of fights but was never involved in most. These fights would more or less happen when it rained, and a lot of times, the proposal of postponing them till 3 O’clock was usually made.

As I got older, a rainy day usually meant comics, movies, hot alu-chops and endless waiting for the showers to thin out a little so I can venture out. There were the times when we’d get caught in the rain and get totally drenched.

I remember it was in my tenth grade that the guys got invited for this party by some PM girls. It was a Saturday and we were all decked up and met up in Down-Shop. As we started off to our destination, which was a rented hall in a pretty posh hotel in Police Bazaar, the rain suddenly came down on us and we literally dissolved in it. There we were, almost the whole of 10B, in the middle of Ward’s Lake [short-cut], in our best clothes and gelled hairstyles, drenched and caught unaware like sitting ducks.

By the time we’d reached the place, we were ushered in by our lovely hostesses, and shown the bathrooms straightaway where we all ended up trying to wring our T Shirts dry. That Figueroa [forgive me if I spelt it wrong] wine didn’t last more than a few minutes as everyone warmed himself up and I’ll tell you, the dim setting and the expanding dimensions of that hall, the preceding downpour and the general excitement and nervousness in the air still remains fresh in my memory.

I met a lot of new people that day, and over the years some of them have become my very good friends and part of that wonderful Shillong gang that constitutes my world back home.

So now as I type this while listening to a melancholic Korean song by some anonymous singer,window shades pulled behind me and the sun shining brightly outside, you can only guess what the weather is in my thoughts.