Rain

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Life trundles by. The wrinkles, they come and crow’s feet steal up, unseen, unbeckoned. But some moments stay, stamped in the memory bank for as long as the blood runs warm.

I was all of nineteen. Dad and Mom were out, at the regular defence party. I don’t recall where Money and Ruby were…inside the house somewhere…..the front door was shut, I remember. It was raining hard and I stood leaning over the balcony railing of the ground floor flat at Ghorpadi, Pune.

It was a dark night, deserted too. The falling water hit the tar hard, shattering the drops into a hundred slivers that shot away to melt in the black. I still hear the steady and rhythmic beat of that particular rain rush, the gurgling of the storm drain, the invigorating nip in the air, the swaying greens and the goose pimples on my forearms.

I reached out to snap off the overhead light. I had a sense of being completely alone and totally ok. I had never felt so alive, so charged, so inviolable. I was awake. I felt wired and peaceful at the same time. There was not a soul, out in the pour. Just the wet shadows, the frigid metal under my arms and the patterned crossroad ahead, bang centre of the three blocks.

I stood out there, frozen for the longest time, afraid to move lest I lose that twinkling wink. The banana swayed and the neem shimmered as the torrent washed away all my young doubts, questions and conflicts. I felt there, in that charmed night, a powerful solitude, the roar of happiness.

Everything was right with the world and I was grateful to be alive.