The Rainy Day.
The whole afternoon whiled itself away under the whirling fan. Languishing in the heat I tossed and turned, hoping the evening would be cooler.
It was boiling. My cheeks damp from perspiration, the book I was trying to read, fallen on the floor, forgotten.
The sudden stealthy cool breeze took me by surprise. And increased at a steady pitch till I felt revived and refreshed.
I stepped out into the front porch. It was getting colder, and the skies were a dark slate gray.
The first rain drop fell fat and trembling on my cheek and my heart went into a somersault of exaltation. Then the downpour truly started and degree by degree, I departed into unknown regions...
A the heavens opened up, in that blissful ice cold shower, I was lost, almost a light year away.
There was a sharpness and pungency to the smell of the wet earth, and it emitted...other sharply etched memories.
Another similar day, another time and place.
Sixteenth year, gawkiness unlimited, dank unruly lion's mane, two bright eyes, peeping shyly through an uneven fringe at my friend of fourteen years.
Rajat something... forgotten his last name. But never that presence and my feelings of dismay on that rain soaked verandah.
There were unseen pools in my eyes. Tears I didn't know could be shed.
It was a pristine childhood, in a colony of co workers, for a British multinational, in a placid small town, in the suburbs of Calcutta.
We lived amidst pleasant surroundings in comfort and even luxury.
Amidst green lawns parks, Badminton and tennis courts swimming pool and a very quaint little club.
That day the back garden gleamed sleekly wet and sorrowful.
The only boy who had ever looked twice at me was going back home, to a small village in the British isles.
A lone crow cawed intermittently. Interspersed by a long drawn melodious cooing of a maddening cuckoo. The incessant cooing struck at the heart of my impending loneliness.
That was the day I had felt alone, all alone, utterly solitary in my heart and soul.
Much later,I would recognize and accept this feeling as kindred spirit, a melancholy guardian angel that presided over me. I would fall in love with my own loneliness.
Away across reddish western skies i envisaged a distant smoky island. Rajat straddling it like an impertinent Collosus, which brought a tremulous smile.
Rajat smiled back relieved. My grievance waned.
"Thank you, for the beautiful present and card," I managed with a wry grin.
My rangy fourteen year old friend, (yes he so towered over me), rolled his eyes expressively and grinned.
"It was nothing. I hope you write a novel, a short story, or at least a poem in that notebook. Just don't tear off the pages to write love letters!"
He cackled raucously in his funny accent, as I swiped at him in ire.
We had met at a play, in which his actor parents were performing, outside Kalamandir, on Theatre road. A summer's acting workshop.
We bumped into each other by accident. He was profusely apologetic and lifted me up. Though I was more tottering on unaccustomed heels than well and truly fallen.
No matter. What mattered was that I was falling, sinking in a swamp of gooey puppy love.
He started shooting questions at me. "Were do you stay?", "Have you come alone, or with a date?", I pointed mutely to my bemused parents.
Then we all got introduced, and he dragged us off to the front row and the best seats. Ma beamed at him, and even daddy was impressed by his manners.
The play was Julius Caesar. Rajat's daddy played a stirring Mark Anthony. His Mommy was a very sultry Cleopatra. Halfway through I shivered with both anticipation and the cold drafting through. My gallant new friend promptly pulled of his sweater draping it on my shoulders.
Had I blushed? I am quite sure that it was to the bottom of my very soul.
Later he took us backstage to meet, yes now I recall, Mr. and Mrs. Khanna. His parents.
After this the summer just flew by on dancing butterfly wings.
His folks were invited by mine and marvelled at our colonial style bungalow, the extensive orderly English gardens, a contrary little spot of Britain in an obscure cranny of bustling Calcutta.
My mind jerked back to our last rain soaked sooty evening, before the summer got over.
What do they call it abroad? The last party of the summer, white night party.
Yes, it was farewell to my precocious white Knight, and farewell it was to summer, to my innocence, the night would be white indeed, wanly incandescent with random clouds of memory.
It was the last time I saw him. He grinned. Yes, he was Sir Grin-a-Lot. I was touched that he had taken a local train to our small town station, ordered a ricky and here he was on my verandah. (We had a garden door and up the verandah steps he had come unannounced.)
I lived the rest of the next two years of my life writing my secret thoughts dreams and experiences in that stylish blue velvet bound book. And used the farewell card as a bookmark often.
Throughout college days, that remained a proof that I had a boyfriend. Cute as a button.
He wrote only once sent me a couple of pictures we had clicked, and then you know how it is with actors and their brood. I was forgotten, an archived little Indian.
I was not inconsolable either. Those were the good old days, young and hearty, we immersed and bathed in life's juices with zest.
They were days I vowed I wouldn't forget...
I had forgotten so much.
My first kiss. My first cigarette. My first stolen sip of rum.
And the rain brought it all back.
In the wake of a locomotive of a teenage boy who pulled me over the tracks of girlhood into girl-womanhood, and made me all eager to grow up..
Back to Reality. The here and now. Forty plus, and counting. Living alone. Working. Not as author. But proofreader.
Dripping wet with my sixteenth year dreams.
Showered toweled and nursing my biggest coffee mug I lounged over to my unmade bed, bending for my forgotten book.
Eerie, pooky, uber-uncanny even.
For the first time,.I noticed the photograph accompanying the back page blurb.
Mr. Rajat Khanna, acclaimed and distinguished author, with hair graying at the temples, stared back at me, still cute, with the dashing dimples, and smoky eyed.
The book whose first chapter was all I had made headway with.
About his early years, traveling through half the world, with his parents and their theatre company.
I let the book fall from my hands, watched the old familiar bookmark slip out with his large rounded scroll.
I wondered now, what would I find in a chapter perhaps named, My experiences, of India?
The little Indian, was she ensconced, and archived there, or had she been erased and deleted from Rajat's childhood memories of rain?
Rain drippings from the dampened, rapidly blackening sky.
Drip....drip....dream...
Rainy days drive you up the wall just like this...
to fall endlessly into a long wet stream of random damp and passionate darkness....
I opened the contents, to search for the chapter.
(c) Amrita Valan 2016
Acknowledgement: The phrase "memories of rain", from the title of a book by author Sunetra Gupta
