Dip dip dip

Rain

Everybody loves rain. Some like to sit cozily in the house with a hot cup of tea while it rains outside, others like to be in the rain, either driving a bike or walking around. I like riding my bike in the rain. There is no fun in getting wet if you have to go to office and work all day. That is where rain coats come in, to keep you dry while you still enjoy the ride in rain. I had a fully body rain coat. I already had a top jacket, all I needed to buy was the bottom pant. With both on, I was fully rain proof all the way to office and back. That is what I thought when I paid the cheerful looking shopkeeper two hundred rupees for that pant. I got to test my new water proofing the very next day, it was pouring rain and I had a meeting to attend. Losing no time I started on my bike in the rain enjoying the cool breeze, the wonderful feeling of cold water on one’s face (or whatever left of it on the front of the helmet). That was when I found someone somewhere had forgot to check the pant for its intended end usage. There was a hole in the pant and since water has this unique capacity of seeping through the smallest of holes, it soon started filling up. The same water which just a short time back was a ‘wonderful feeling’ and the reason behind the cool breeze wasn’t so much now. When your shirt gets wets, you just adjust to it and take a hot cup of tea once you reached office. No amount of hot cup of tea or coffee or adjustment is going to help when your pants are wet along with those aaram ka mamla hai thing gets wet. When the first drop of water seeps through the thick denim jeans is when nature fights with nurture : Nature says boss run for cover, forget your bike , nurture keeps you waiting until the signal turns green at the traffic light and lets nature take over only after you followed all traffic rules and with proper blinking yellow light indicators reach a nearby tea shop or shelter, meanwhile water is filling up inside the rain coat slowly soaking up your pant completely and soon you start feeling like sitting in a little pool of water complete with sloshing sound and feeling. When you feel the water droplets falling from your thigh to your shin inside the jeans which itself is covered by the shiny looking new dark blue raincoat pant, that is when you keep your chin high and look down upon people nearby who weren’t smart enough to plan for the rainy days and buy a rain coat or were stupid enough to leave it at home, never let your chin down and most important of all never let anyone know that the shiny new raincoat pant has a hole in it .  That was the last day I wore that raincoat pant . That incident has scarred me so much that even after 3 yrs I have not yet bought my second pair of raincoat pants and I now stop when it rains heavily or drive through and get wet – atleast I know I am going to get wet now

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My earliest memories of rain are from the time my family was in Berhampur. There used to be a small ground nearby at a slightly lower level from the road. One had to climb down to the ground. It formed a natural pond when it rains and it used to rain pretty heavily there, so soon the ground would become a huge pond. The water would come upto my knees. Thrashing in the water was a major pastime for me and my friends then. We used to play everyday there until the day someone told us there was a crocodile in the pond. Now, we had never seen a crocodile and we weren’t planning to see one live slithering in the same water where we thrashed around either. All we knew about the crocodile was, pappu’s brother had told us, it was a huge beast terribly strong in water but weak on land and would tear us apart if we ever ventured in the water. Though we saw grown up people, ignoring our cries of warning for not entering the water as it was infested with crocodiles, wading through the shin high ( for them) water to reach the other side of the ground and upto their homes, we, the gang of three, believed in our savior, 6 yr old pappu who was the one who told us about the croc. Exactly how he found out that there was a crocodile?  He said his elder brother had seen the crocodile floating near the far end near the old banyan tree. That settled it, even if we doubted pappu we could not doubt his elder brother who was already in 3rd std and a big bully. If he was afraid of something, the whole world should be afraid of it then. We never played in the ground pond again. Soon the rains stopped and in a few days all the water dried up. Me and my friend ran up to the pond to have a look at the crocodile now that all the water was gone. We didnt find it. Dejected we came back and on the way we met pappu who said that his brother had seen the crocodile running away from the ground-pond. since all the water was getting dried up, and he had chased it all the way on his bicycle, a BSA champ, till the natural pond at the end of the road which had water year round. We were astounded, his brother was both brave and clever, knowing that crocodile was weak on land he had chased it himself and saved us all from it, else it would have attacked us when we came to play on the ground. Meanwhile grown ups had now started using the ground for their evening walks.

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