A Walk To Remember -II ....Joy is like the rain...

‘I saw raindrops on my window

Joy is like the rain’ 

When we were little, this was one of the hymns that we would sing at the top of our voices, our cacophonous symphony being conducted by one of the nuns, from our school St. Mary’s, on the piano. It took us a few years, to truly realize the charm of the showers, and the glee that it filled our hearts with.

Shillong is not too far from Cherrapunjee and Mawsynram, both of which had the distinction of qualifying as the wettest place on earth, for several years. So the town itself experienced spells of rain that sometimes stretched into a week. Those would be the days and nights of an unceasing, whining, drizzly kind of rain. The dampness pervaded everything from shoes to books to mattresses. The only thing that it couldn’t dampen was our young minds. They sprang up, as lush as the greens, with its touch. The most enjoyable part of the rains was again and of course, our walks to and from school.

In the lower grades, gum-boots and rain-coats were a fashion statement. While it must have been just another chore for the parents to change their kids into them, the kids definitely loved all the attention of parents coming into the wet school verandahs, as opposed to waiting at the gates. They then strutted off showing their stuff to the less privileged co-walkers.

But as we got to the higher grades, that’s when the rains were no longer something to be fret  about anymore at all. As if it wasn’t good enough to be on the roads, the rains only added to the romance.The mountain weather was unpredictable, and changed with a frequency comparable to the colours of the chameleon while jumping around bushes of speckled colours. So, while the day would be sunny and bright, the skies would almost always suddenly turn grey right around 2.30 pm and then there would be a torrential downpour at the time all the school students started to hit the road while heading home.

Umbrellas of every colour danced in the sidewalks and occasionally did a flip on someone when the winds blew strong, leaving them wet but showered with more rainy fun. My memories of one of mine are fixated on the one that had small printed flowers of many different colours. It matched a dress that my friends had gifted me on my birthday and the combo had brought lots of compliments.

However, the one rain walk that beats all was the umbrella-less one. We were in tenth grade when two classmates and I decided to just walk on. I don’t remember if we didn’t have our umbrellas with us or if we did it out of sheer intent to enjoy the rain. What I do remember is that we bought some bakery biscuits and ambled along munching in drenched abandon.

To add to all the flavour, monsoons were a hit theme among the Bollywood film-makers in the 1990s.Some movies had very racy songs like Tip Tip Barsa Paani with Raveena Tandon serenading Akshay Kumar in a wet saree. Those were the kinds that drew furtive glances, when they appeared in Chitrahaar, under the pretences of reading a book. They were too starkly embarrassing to watch obviously. But the ones that touched the soul and added to the ambience were the likes of Saawan Barse Tarse Dil (a personal favourite).

Hindi music was just beginning to get popular among the local folks, with India gaining importance in the international arena, particularly with its spate of beauty queens, but old time rock and pop classics were always raging in Shillong. A coverless cassette had ended up in our music chest and it had this song,

I saw you….. Ahem…Walking in the rain…. (I now know it was the Oran ‘Juice’ Jones version)

Who cared about what the singer was singing in the rest of the song…it was melodious and just those seven words were enough to create memories and dreams!