summer, rain...

This summer vacation spent in kerala was a study in human frailty. Rains came and went with out notice. Powercut was the only other event that beat rains when it came to uncertainty. Throw in a few harthals, couple of road accidents and some real pain-in-the-back political processions; you've got a vacation you would rather refuse.Plus if a few of your family members fall sick, thats all you need to regret it even more sincerely.

Now I must sound like a pretentious non resident who looks down on my home town, where it was all a part of my life till i left. May be yes. But once you sort of get away from it all, once the withdrawal symptoms have died down, you just don't miss it a lot.

The first 2 weeks, I found the roads too bumpy, cities so unclean and people too smelly. The second half of the vacation took me some where else.

I met the guy who used to come to our house to climb the coconut trees. He had grown old but still looked healthy. His son is now a taxi driver and had recently made him a grand father of 3 grandchildren. All of them are studying in the private school opposite to my house. They walk it down from their house, almost a kilometer away, every morning. That morning, glancing through the newspaper that had nothing new, I saw them entering the school and remembered my younger days.

Every first week of June, when schools reopened after summer, the rains come.I always had to walk to school with my new school uniform sticking to my body from the rain water. But inside the humid and warm class rooms without fans, it dried up fast.

I remembered playing in the muddy water on the school play ground. I remembered the perpetually bruised knees. I could even taste the packed lunch prepared by my mother.I remembered my friends; the maths teacher who pinched me with no mercy when I made mistakes; the school day; the sports day.. . I remembered coming back from the school holding my younger sister's hand.

I remembered all this sitting in the porch, looking at those 3 kids. The rain was in my eyes.