Small Things

Rain rained hard, the newly tarred roads looked new and black and the old tarred roads with potholes that were innumerable, like the holes that an inexperienced dosa maker’s dosa made, looked ruined, broken and smashed. The rain drops like silver lines shot down on earth and in it went, never to be seen again. The silver lines made small bubbles in the water in the potholes. The bubbles didn’t form a round, there was too little time for forming a round, and they rather looked like domes, domes of mosques. The sandal colored water in the potholes formed brown- orange pastries once the rain ceased, it stuck like wax to ones shoes if stepped on or in. The thick paste went in deep into the designed dug in roadways on the soles and stayed there like deep ugly secrets that have to be forced out for a light soul, sole. Anything that is sharp and thin would do to force it out, from a knife to a broom stick but not words, how much ever sharp they were. The thick paste if left in the roadways of the sole, it would make you feel them all the time, a bump under your shoed feet, protruding, heavy and irritating. Abandoning those shoes wouldn’t help as the rain would come again and potholes are disappearing nowhere, may be something else would help like not stepping on or in those potholes and not letting the mock brown- orange pastry get under your feet. The wheels of vehicles that go down into the potholes and come out of it paint themselves brown- orange and leave a trail on the new black roads, as a reminder of the past or even a warning of the coming future. The school girls in uniforms wear black slippers, giving their nylon socks and Bata shoes a rest, a monsoon holiday. The boys have brown- orange dots and shapeless patches painted on their shirts and trousers from the muddy afternoon break’s rainy football match. The relentless advertisement on radio and television of Poppy umbrellas leave the common man humming’mazha mazha kuda… ’. The nursery kids refuse to let go of their fancy umbrellas even when they bounce around in crowded buses without a vacant seat or footrest. The biker women cover themselves partly in ridiculous colors of plastic material, raincoats, and the wet sari cling to their legs once they get down from their bikes and walk into their work place. The men on bikes look like mini hulks as the air puffs up their fully covering raincoats. In the traffic signals the travelers in cars listen to the radio over the sound of the wipers. Darkness fills the rooms, humid air shrinks the doorway or enlarges the door making it a strenuous ordeal to close the doors and if closed, open the doors. The cloudy days and dark corridors make the day at college a romantic one. The sound of rain becomes the sound of music and adolescent lovers listen to a lot of music and do a lot of dreaming. The combo of hot chai and parippuvada or dal vada from roadside dhabas tastes tastier but the ice cream shops take a back seat. The washed clothes take days to dry and your favorite jeans are always wet and heavy on you in the rain. Students blame the rain for everything, “why are you late?” “Because of the rain ma’am”, “where is the homework?” “The rain wet it all ma’am”, as if they were inhabitants of a refugee camp with a leaking tent. Wet umbrellas are left open to dry in the balconies, porches, classroom corners, supermarket corners, office corners. Then, gradually the rain ceases, then stops, sun comes back, umbrellas stay home, Bata shoes prolong their leave for some more time, and brown- orange pastries turn into hard cakes, football matches happen in heat, women abandon their raincoats, men are reluctant to let go of their mini hulk form, college is romantic only for the lovers, the dreamers give dreaming a break, the doors and doorways behave better, the jeans dry up, the roads turn grey, the earth becomes dusty, the jingles of Poppy umbrellas fall out of trend, kids forget their umbrellas, students find another excuse for not doing the homework.

I love rain and all that it brings with it, or rather all that I think that rain brings with it. I don’t go around inspecting the world when it rains and see if people are actually humming the poppy jingles, but, I would like to believe they do, even if the Poppy stops manufacturing umbrellas I would still like to believe that people sing that song during monsoon. I think it is so with me because I have this memory of walking through the vegetable market, when I was a kid, near our house and there one of the vegetable vendors happened to be singing this particular song. I remember it so well for some reason and since then without me realizing it I was living with this bizarre belief that people sing this song in the rainy season. It is strange and stupid but I love it and I wish it was true. I also believe that, as you touch a tree bark with your palm the bark from within sends a glowing vibe through your palm into your heart which stays there forever and makes you stronger.

Some things get instilled in your mind and stays there without an effort. You don’t acknowledge them, you naturally over look them. Those small things are always there though, refusing to let go of you, linking you to your origin, your raw true self with that faint, feeble yet unbreakable thread of theirs. Whoever you are, wherever you go, whatever you do, the small things in you decide where you end up, as what.