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Mellow Memories

The external nature gets colored by our subjective feelings. Thats why, different seasons evoke myriad

variety of feelings for even any two given persons. But even then, certain feelings remain somewhat

common and recognizable in nature, just because of the collective aspect hidden in them. As a child I

loved the rains: the overflowing streets to dunk our legs halfway deliberately in gutter-water on the way

back from school; the speed-boat race of our competitive rickshaw-ferries that elicited squeals of

laughter and excited shrieks.didnt find any logic then as to why the parents got so angry with the

splash that drenched us. The luxury of a rainy day is what I dearly miss as a teacher in college now. The

perfect icing to a rainy day happened if there was a major power-cut, which provided the much-coveted

relaxation from the stringent study-schedule, thanks to no-generator times of our childhood. The

evening then became a toast to the gothic creativity of my mamawho unspooled his endless treasure

of bhooter golpo, and actually brought live the impossible world of evil phantasms in the shadowy-

yellow ambience of the flickering candle-light. He considered it a tribute to his evil genius when even a

silent tap on the shoulder sent me and my brother to freaked-screams of luxuriant-dread. The khichudi

and hilsa fry used to be the cult dinner-items to mark the closure of such rainy days, though I doubt

how much of that love for the same is left in me after surviving the trauma of the namesake, yellow-glob

of khichdi in the hostel-years.

The college days retained the flavor of adda in the rainy days, with pure, uninterrupted power-cuts for

hours, and the deliberate forgoing of emergency lamps for the noble sake of spiritual elevation. The

necessary accessories of jhalmuri and multi-flavored Lays-mixture spiced up the gothic tang, and our

individual contributions extended the chapters of our collective spook-book to newer vistas of black-

magic and supernatural tales across the cultural diversity of India. But the most loveable part of such

monsoon days belonged to the beautiful afternoons before the dark and the rainwhen truant breeze

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and deepening skyline dared us to go out-of-joints, to indulge in a lavish riot of colors in the attire and

accessories to match up equably with the promising grey and the tinkling sounds of the nature outside.

On such evenings, we made impromptu plans to visit the ghats, hang out till aarti, laughing out loud at

the improvised piety of the foreigners, and most importantly, taking in deeply the sights and sounds of

youthfulness and happiness.

Right now, seasons have become a blur. They are registered only in terms of their convenience or

otherwisethanks to the end of the vibrant student-life and entry into the somber world of job-hood. So

far, even this year, rainy season was registered in the following phrases: Shall I venture upon this dress

in this weather?, Got a bad flu!! Result of just five minutes in rain, Lets drop the plan todaywho

will get out in such drenching shower?, Power-cut! God! Shelve the plans of using projector in the

class .so on and so forth. Thanks to the deadline given by Anshul and Namrata, I was trying to

scribble something of minimal sense on the given topic Monsoon, that I actually, after so long a time,

looked at monsoon closely, and re-lived the loving memories of childhood and hostel life so dearly.