Raindrops & memories
Month of May ! Summer has set in and Bangalore has never been so warm, even a few years back! The mornings are pleasant but as the day grows... Weather is changing!
There is something nice about summers- the 4o'clock rains! So typical in a tropical country and of course in most equatorial parts! The dark rain clouds ; Cumulonimbus; cover the blue sky which looked so dry till about a few minutes ago...and the downpour begins!
Big drops of rain, the skies burst open with lightening, the roaring sound follows! The sound of thunder echos across the cloud laden skies and the lightening flash their ugly streaks cutting across the dark clouds.. Sometime they are red! one could weave a story to keep a child quiet!
Swaying tree tops, chattering sound on the tilled roofs and the skylights- the music goes on!
A little away from our apartment is a lake that has a stretch of swampy land.The white Pond Herons share their experiences sitting in the rains! We call this species 'Bok' in Bengali. Rabindranath Tagore has written a song that comes to my mind - ' Megher Kole Kole jai jey choley Boker paati...' ; against the dark clouds flies across a team of Herons!
I am reminded of my childhood in Jamshedpur - Summer vacations, no school, only a few pages of homework to be done - mom's rules... but parents usually didn't mind if we missed doing these till we hit the senior school! We had a big garden and lots of big fruit trees - Mangoes, 'Cheeku' and of course Guava trees... Below each tree would be line of circular brick forms to ensure water stays! Little Sparrows and Mynas would often take a bath in there during these summer afternoons!
My brother & I would put on a central tree - a rudimentary bird feeder - A coconut shell with grains for them.... ! We would watch from our window the series of events and try and figure out if ' this bird was here yesterday... or was it the other ....'
Then as the 4 o'clock rains started... and the hailstones fell, we would be excited and run to get our colorful umbrellas- run to collect the hailstones form our big lawn ! Ah and also a few small green Mangoes that would come off the branch as it swayed in the rains!
I also recollect playing , being the Frog!.. What fun it used to be... Each house had those big black umbrellas, they were the only ones that could stand such heavy rains! The fancy ones were still not in... We had 3 big Umbrellas - the biggest was one that could contain my brother & I ... I used to call it 'Dadur Chata' - 'Grandpas Umbrella'. We would sit under it outside in the rains and pretend we were frogs! Big drops of rain, the big protective umbrella and our smiles!
So many simple things that brought us such joy - the sound of rains, the paper boats that we raced in the narrow garden drain around our house, the biting into the green mangoes and making my brother run into the house to get some salt...Life was so simple and our wants to few !
( Picture - Herons in the Rain near the lake in our locality)
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