There are few occasions, especially in Kolkata, when you’d have rain on a cold winter morning. It’s incredibly depressing to even hear that, let alone watch it. But there is that charm, that wet coldness which stirs the inside of you. It doesn’t rattle you. It doesn’t numb you. It begs you to step up, to be counted.
After an exam season worth remembering and not remembering both, the first morning I wake up to find a misty-wet-early December morning made me realize that the typical everyday-chilly-wet-mountain mornings could also be found on the plains. It made me yearn ever yet again to be curled up somewhere in the hills. And with D beside me. As always.
This is something I had intended to post yesterday, but with due gratitude to BSNL and their internet service I couldn’t.
It was pretty hot, maybe it would be an understatement. Humid weather in Kolkata is never anything else. Last week was horrendous, the pitiful heat overwhelming. As rain forecasts were announced, I heard a groan from all around. No not a groan, a sigh would be more apt. My semesters are on and I had been to this friend’s place for a session of joint study. When with a huge gust, the doors and windows clattered, maybe it seemed to be a relief. But no, this CESC plays its truant, and we were left in the middle of a power cut. Eventually when the lights came back on again, we noticed the darkened sky just a shade darker.
It was evening by now. And it was darker. I was returning home. Around 7:30. I was pedaling down the road, when there was yet another power cut and amazingly the first showers came and landed right in front of me, behind me, on me. It was dark everywhere. I basically couldn’t see a thing in front me while cycling. And around me a drizzle. With the smell of freshly wet mud. I live at this place of the E.M.Bypass. and there are a few ‘jheel-s’ (big ponds or water bodies) around. And adjacent running parallel to the road are the rail tracks. Amidst that magical setting if raindrops falling on my head, with a loud roar, a local train whooshed by, as I kept looking sideways, never forgetting to pedal my way upfront. The light of the bogies fell on those ‘jheel-s’ and the reflections of the running by, immersed in hazy droplets, with ripples abound. It was tranquil. It was magical. I just stopped to admire. Magic wasn’t done yet. All of a sudden, thunders cracked the sky, and I witnessed something of a lightening. The dark sky abound all around endlessly. Just close your eyes and imagine the setting. Now from a bit to your right a lightning flashes right down to the end of the horizon in front of you. The phenomena from exactly the same angle to your left with branches . And completing the troika right down your nose, straight down the horizon,making the scene picture perfect. To me atleast. Nature’s amazingly pure and mysterical. If I had a cam, I’d love to take that shot. Gosh, I didn’t have one!
And as I returned soaking wet, I exulted in my good fortune to have completed a hattrick of drowning myself in the first showers of the nor’westers third time running…
