My dear monsoon,

This parched state needs you much more than it ever did. As you played hide and seek the last year, you know how much you are awaited. And in spite of waiting so much, I want you to arrive at my convenience! Every time, when it’s time for my office, I would rather pray you hold on till I reach the place. I am sure many do it as during monsoons, most office talks revolve around how successfully people escape rains!! The one getting drenched is rather an unlucky fellow. It’s almost June end and have still left us high and dry yet we want you, at our own sweet time. None can get more ironical than the man! 

For the past couple of years, I really don’t remember it raining cats and dogs. Now I particularly miss it as it’s been many years I haven’t seen the downpour. And today, in urbanized India, it just spells traffic jams, waterlogged roads, delayed trains and flood like situation even normal rains.

Maybe those sylvan surroundings, lush greenery, small waterfalls are confined mere to countryside. Yes, my childhood monsoon memories are so vivid as if everything happened just the day before. Thunderstorms, very predictable power cuts, leaking rooftop of ancestral house and the noise of raindrops shouting at the top of their voice…we could barely hold umbrellas in the strong wind and raincoats were equally useless.  To everyone perhaps, monsoon memoirs are an eclectic mix of excitement and yes, little inconvenience.

That rain scene is beckoning. Getting drenched in the first rains could be a divine experience as it has such a cathartic effect. And at the same time, those sharp raindrops are so pricking. The dark clouds crowd the sky and it just bursts naturally. And men hold their tears and hide their laughs, calling it self-control. When we know it can’t be right always and we want everything as right as rains! None can get as ironical as the man!  

Aftereffects effects, too, are appealing. Raindrops still keep dripping from tree leaves even after the rainfall.   You have so much to teach us. G K Chesterton’s rainy portrayal in the essay The Romantic in the Rain says it so much, “This bright, wet, dazzling confusion of shape and shadow, of reality and reflection, will appeal strongly to any one with the transcendental instinct about this dreamy and dual life of ours. It will always give a man the strange sense of looking down at the skies.”

I know you would hit back with vengeance if we want it to rain at our convenience. Next time, I may rather wait for the bright sun to make headway through dark clouds. And if there is a drizzle when I am on a morning walk or moving out for work, I would rather say, “Let it rain..” after all, rains are the most beautiful when they strike unheralded…

-KanChan