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.

Sunnier Days

A broken heart signals the end of immaturity, that’s what I’d like to believe. No one comes out of it the same and when we pass the “blame-game” stage we realize that in the end it just prepared us for bigger shit that’s going to happen.

You might call me pessimistic but in reality this is an optimistic approach to a struggle of a life.

The weather eased out a little this morning. Finally, some reprieve from the weather gods, but now it looks like it is getting back to normal. At least I’m indoors penning (?) this journal and not outside in the sun.

How I used to love the sun when I was a kid, and the sunniest day of all, Annual Sports Day. Even if it rained the whole week, it never rained on Sports Day until the final March-past was completed. A couple of weeks, even more, of practicing our class drills, and the ensuing after-school sports practice all culminated in this great “social” event. For me I don’t have too many memories of the latter, sports practice. I was involved in it 3 times and the last was in class 10, after a gap of 5 years. I can’t fight it anymore now; I just never was that good in sports. Add to that a family concerned more about grades than how I felt about other things, then I guess you can call it fucked-up to an extent.

Yeah, bring it on guys, I accept it. (Although I had a few memorable cricket moments)

Back to sunnier topics, how I would never mind the sun back then. No one did, as we all frolicked to our tents in our drill costumes, looking forward to the goodies offered in the stalls around the quadrangle by our very own wonderful teachers. It was a small world for me back then, spread over 24 acres and a bit of Canada.

Then after the brief sun came the rainy season, a real dampener on those cricketing aspirants, while for the footballers it only meant a slushier football [Pit]ch. Back then there wasn’t much any of us saw in the rain.

Now I’m looking forward to it.