Rain, Happy Holiday to Me!

Internet and Facebook friend Chris Dickerson has this interesting poem on Facebook Notes that resonates with a lot I feel when it rains like it does in Bombay. In Bombay rain means buckets, more buckets, even more buckets. You wonder where all the water comes from and then you remember it was a damp marshy place before the Englishmen reclaimed it. What's wonderful about Dickerson's poem is that he intersperses it with a favourite song from yesteryears, "Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain." I just loved that song when I was a boy and I still love it and sing it. Wonder where all the loves of my life have fled. Maybe, to matchbox flats with hairy beasts for husbands. Never mind. 

"The only girl I care about is gone away

 Lookin' for a brand new start

 But little did she know that when she left that day

 Along with her she took my heart..."

That said about Bombay rains, can't believe another year has passed and the rains are here again, well, almost.I can see dark clouds in the sky. Once again there's the feeling of newness of fresh clothes, new books, and tiresome days in classrooms (which I hated). Rain reminds me of school and homework. The sultry days where there wasn't any football or cricket but the endless cheeping of cicadas in the night and wetness. We didn't have television those days and the only option was to read whatever came into the hand. And nothing came sometimes. I was like an animal hungering for books and stories. There would be competition for the few books we had. So I read a lot of Readers' Digest from a friend's house. That's how I got my modest understanding of places and history. 

Of course, rain makes me sing. It makes me sing tunes from olden songs, sung by people who are no more. I still love Guns and Roses "November Rain" and the Jose Feliciano number, "Listen to the falling rain." There were many other songs I loved to sing. Songs of love and longings which came evocatively in dark days when the clouds would obscure the sky.

Tomorrow I am embarking on a journey to Kerala, my native land. I was born there. It's a land of plenty of rain, rivers, canals and waterlogged paddy fields. I will post pictures on Twitter which will be carried on my blog. I may not be online as much as I would like to as it is a small village in a remote area where people aren't that modern in a worldly sense. So pardon my absence from blogging. I need this break. Happy holiday to me and to you!