childhood rains ...

I.....
had been longing for long to scribble about monsoon.
but about the moonsoon in my home town..they are unlike the rains of the city.
they never brought in commotion. they were an integral part of our life..an inspiring
theme for our artists..and a nostalgia to our expatriates...
whenever i thought about moonsoon..i had the same picture in my canvass. the picture of an urchin on his way to school through those country roads of kerala soaked in mud ...ever greeen are those lush lovely rains that fondled me on my way to school.. my companionship with rain began in those journeys ..those muddy roads..those transient streams which often surprised me with their spontaneous birth but often disappointed me with their life spans..
those afternoon breaks wherein we played football at the school ground..and those trips back home....with shoes full of water..with that splashing sound..washing myselves in almost in all the pools on my way back..and those regular shoutings of my grandmother seeing my grimy clothes..
rainy days had lots in them to bring immense delight to a rural boy out there in a small indian town..
i still have older memories of my early schoolin days..wherein i used to get a cap..a plastic cap..which is normally worn by the fishermen of our town..i used to buy such a cap on every rainy season and i never had a rain coat for myselves...that cap was my precious treasure.
i think a red one?? yeah it was always red in color...i had a liking for red since then :-)

the stream behind my home gets stronger and i used to limit my bathin on the first 2 steps and often i used to feel that the stream is calling me into its depths but i never gave away to temptations...

rains where often accompanied by power outages and almost all nites where darker and damp
the life in the evenings were around a kerosene lamp...and imagination got unbundled often..
i used to create all possible shadows on the wall with my hands....and some times incorporating easily available house hold articles..which often ended up in mutliple rounds of shouting culminating in light spanks.

still remember those evenings filled with chantings frm ramayanam.
but i never listened to them carefully :-) i was happy the children's version of it..which i wud have read countless times..but at heart am a fan of krishna and bhima than of rama.
but a brother like lakshman is an adorable guy any day..though hard to find.

as i grew older, imagination took new heights. i learnt the art of making cigars from newspaper.
making was pretty easier but quality test was at high risk. with a single opportunity masked from the eyes of my mother and grand mother i used to test them in a haste often ending up in long coughs.


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its raining out here today...i can see it across the glass panes of my office...
it started a while back and its still on..now its no more in a haste nor too weak..its rainin in a rhytm..just like the rains of my home town.
lemme go out for walk..good that i brought my umbrella today..
its not that windy so that i may get wet...a good opportunity to get to bak those yesterdays..
now..lemme get to into it..as the same old school boy..with that heart which got filled with simple pleasures ....lemme have a moment of content....
i'll be rite bak...