When It Rains...

Monsoon touched his city today. Since last night, it has been drizzling. The haze of smoke and dust has been replaced by that of water vapor. The leaves have come out of their tepid countenance and picked up their verdant palette. The air smells of wet grass, and damp mud, the otherwise prevalent smell of sour sweat, and rotting waste is gone. The smell of heat has been replaced by the flavor of the rain.

He woke up to find the moist air filling his nostrils. With arms wrapped around himself, he sat on the stairs outside his room. With his eyes towards east, he could see approaching planes in a grey and green morning. As he breathed in the beautiful morning, his face felt the soft caresses of the wonderfully cool breeze. And inside is closed eyes he was taken behind in time. To a place that is still there, in a moment which is not.

It was the top floor of his college, in the gallery that joined the two opposing wings of the two departments. The end which was a favorite haunt of the honey bees. It had a big brown honeycomb, that during the summers smelt of honey, wax, and honeybees. Sometimes a bee used to zip past your nose dangerously close, sometimes it did bite too, but these times were rare. They both were there that afternoon when it was raining. It was lunch and almost everyone had gone back to have it. but they had lingered behind. In the time that passed in between their sentences, the skies had started to pour. A soft drizzle had joined the landscape, and air now carried a waft of water falling on the dry earth along with the faint smell of the eucalyptus blossoms. In the distance the orange earth had started changing their colors. The air had cleared and they both could see far ahead, towards the place where the river turned a horseshoe turn. Towards the fields that had been barren for a while. Towards the plots where foundations were being laid for buildings to come. Towards a present that was being moulded for future.

He could smell the faint sweet smell from a tress of her hair that had come loose in the wind and drifted towards his face. Brushing so softly against his eyes. He could see the faint glitter of the sun playing hide and seek amidst the clouds in the gold of her earrings. And in her eyes he could see himself.

In moments like these, you feel you can see yourself snuggled safe in your future. The eyes behold your vision, and you behold those eyes. Its a perfectly symbiotic relation. Each sees what one wants to see. Every twitch of the lips, every flicker of the eyes is taken in. A thousand unuttered words, hidden within the pregnant silence are taken in. And a hundred sighs are let out in one. In these fleeting seconds one lives a hundred years. Yet it takes just a small knock to break these porcelain moments.

Like the room-cleaner coming up and tapping him softly on his shoulder with two protracted fingers, to cheerfully say, "Good-morning Sir..."