It was a rainy day and it was pouring as hell. I had seen 6 summers by then and loved the smell of the first rain drops on the soil. The aroma of rain drops on the parched land intoxicated me. I inhaled a deep breath wishing to breathe in all the scent in one go. I just loved the scent. It was all over, near the window pane, near the open door and everywhere.
The door is open. This is all I wished. I was so short that I could not reach the door latch. It was plain luck that I could now do what I wanted to. And all I wanted was to dance in the rain, get wet, dirty and keep on dancing in the mud. And I did. I did not notice the bullock cart which came trotting from behind. When I saw it, since I was not mischievous, no idea struck me. So, I just climbed on to the bullock cart silently by a rope hanging at the back. The driver obviously did not notice, unluckily! The cart kept on trotting and I was enjoying the rain and the free ride. Boy, did I know the concept of free and paid that time!
When I suddenly could not recognize the streets anymore, I could not see any way how to go back home. God told me to cry. I obliged. The cart wallah had the shock of his life seeing me hanging to the rope at the tail of the cart. He asked me a lot of things which I never answered, I was good at doing one thing then, crying and I did not want to get diverted. That guy had some tough time it seems, he returned in the rain and kept asking the shopkeepers on the way if they recognize me. LOL, no one knew. So he kept returning back on the way he had went. When he reached near my place, I suddenly stopped crying and jumped out of the cart. Landed at home safely. I could hear the guy shouting at my back, but then I was good at doing one thing at one time. I was running inside and I did not want to get diverted.
Its 10 AM already and the rain just does not subside. Strangely, I don’t love rains anymore. I love the scent of the rain nevertheless. Somethings just don’t change. I checked the rice grains on the window pane, still there. May be the birds had their stomachs full or I had been overgenerous yesterday. I looked down from my 11th floor. Dots of blue, yellow, green each accompanied by a black dot started from somewhere in the ground floor of my apartment and ended at the school bus on the road. After the bus moved, the black dots returned to the base of my apartment. Children look really beautiful when dressed in these colorful raincoats. More beautiful than the rain. Mothers, as always, are a caring lot. Even if the black umbrellas would be swaying in the windy rain, still they would stay with their child till it climbs up the bus and waves its hand from the window.
The rains continued till afternoon. All day I was thinking about the countdown to my new life which is 20 more days to go. Saloni came in from school when I was just closing the lift door in the ground floor. She was a mirror image of mine. Dirty as mud personified, wet as rain, barely able to carry her overloaded bag on one shoulder, she was enjoying her ice-cream! She is 12. I was better. Much better than her. I never ate ice-cream in rains. On the way up, she just blabbered, kept on with it and licked her ice-cream in between. Her mother, my neighbor, saw her state when the lift opened up on the 11th floor. She opened her mouth and Saloni hid behind me, tight-lipped. Amazing chemistry! But one thing I admired, Salonis calculation – she was done with the ice-cream when the lift opened.
Tomorrow is weekend.
As the evening entered through the window in form of darkness, I striked off one day more in the calendar. 19 More days to go for the Bhubaneswar Pani Poori.
Nick Second Life 