Naked Rain

I woke up to pitter-patter raindrops, the Gods are smiling I thought. I love the rains. Nothing can be more comfortable than sleeping while it rains. Drizzles, too, are half as good, but it doesn't drizzle in Delhi. After Shillong, it only drizzles in London, I think. Shillong's monsoons are romantic. The sun peirces through the pine trees soon after it pours. The city wears a clean look, almost cathartic in experience! And there is still something more unique. The sun also shines as it rains. When kids, we were told that somewhere the wolves were getting married, hence the phenomena. I don't know know where this came from, but we believed it and rejoiced in the marriage of the wolves.

Delhi's rains accompanies woeful feelings. Getting up from bed is a struggle. Going to office an even bigger struggle -- the invariably snarling traffic because of water logging everywhere. By the time one reaches office, losing all that cool is kosher. But today was no typical weekday, so I did not spew venom. Good for my colleagues, who are always at the receiving end. Someone just called me the 'little monster' the other day after I blew the hell out of my senior for a far too unwarranted comment. I have no regrets really, because I think you don't have to be an asshole to be a boss. You can be a nice individual and still be a boss! Anyway!

Thus rains instill different moods in different people. With a slow day at work, I caught up wuth my close friend Geeta for a tete-a-tete. My friend was rather melancholic. The rains, she said, was doing something to her. "Let's do something about loneliness... lets learn singing." I was taken aback, the question as it is coming from someone who never has a dull moment in life. She globetrots, has a rollicking real estate business, goes for swimming, para gliding, parties every weekend -- and has been happily married for over 10 years. "Hows that possible for you?" I asked. "Anyone can be," she replied. "Despite meeting new people everyday I feel lonely". It was raining emotions, as our conversations veered towards life and loneliness.

I didn't have any therapeutic answers, nor was Geeta expecting anything serious from me. So I told her maybe, singing was a good idea -- two frogs croaking would definitely invoke the rain Gods and bring incessant rains on parched Delhi! But heck no! On second thoughts, I told I her I would go buy a MAC lipstick. We laughed. That was it! If at all there is anything I could fathom, it was that we hadn't been in touch on a daily basis like before and the laughter in our lives was missing. [Sometimes life just gets so busy].

Laughter binds us at the hips. They are the main ingredients in my friendship with her, Natasha, Deepika... Just anything can trigger it. When I was diagnosed with apparent cancer, Geeta and Deepika made me forget all about it. My first trip to the E&T specialist is memorable. Seeing the doctor in that government hospital treat her patients had us thrown out of the room because we couldn't control ourselves. A lesson in phonetics was what we thought was going on in that claustrophobic room. "Aa karo, ee karo, mooh kholo" the doctor ordered her patients before shuffing all kinds of instruments down their throats. Like schoolkids, we were told, "please leave the room," as the our window-rattling laughter were distracting one and all. Another visit to Max hospital after the quite pathetic cancer institute, and Geeta was inspecting the hospital to comment, "Oh guess what, this is where I want you to be, I can dress well and come," before she went click click of me with her mobile phone and I was posing in a corridor filled with moronic patients, of whom the only upbeat ones were the likes of me and my enthusiatic pals!

At the end of the conversation today, we were doing the thing to do -- laughing our guts out, ssomething psychologists would, of course, call the mood-transmissive effect. I say, the visceral effect of the rains on us mal-functioned people, as my sister labels us. But on a more profound note, I wind off with a quote from Francis Bacon: Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.