It's raininggggg

Oh, at last. The rains hit Bombay the other day and I was so inspired that I just had to blog about it. Well, actually I need to keep up a good number of posts per month, which is why I am staying up at 2 in the morning and pounding the keys on a pretty insensitive keyboard!

To be precise, the pre-monsoon showers hit Bombay last Friday in the evening. Shower would be a wrong, and strong word to use. At least where I was, it was more like a light drizzle.
I was walking down from the railway tracks when I saw flashes of lightning on the horizon and the low rumble of thunder. A sound that is sometimes made by your stomach when lunch hour arrives and you are still 50 meters, or 5 minutes away from eating. What was that? Me exaggerating? Fine then, the sound is on a much larger, atmospheric scale. Jeez.

The moment the first drops of rain hit my head I ran. Ran like Julia Roberts in "The Runaway Bride". And boy, did I run? I am frankly surprised at my own stamina. No tiredness, no breathlessness. I dodged matronly ladies hurrying with their vegetable purchases, roadside vendors scurrying to get their wares under cover and legions of preteen kids treating the road like their playground. The kids seemed to go out of their way to trip me or at least make me stop. Blasted brats!!

My sprint through the crowded and dark roads enabled me to reach the apartment just as the rain gods took it in their heads to pour 7 and half bucketfuls on our collective heads. Enough to make a thirsty, grimy ,dusty city hope for succour but noth enough to fill up even a few potholes. I also had a new experience that evening-in that concrete jungle I got to smell ,for the first time in my life the rich smell of the soil when the first rains hit the ground. Funny because most of my life I have spent amongst trees and open houses where there is more earth and less concrete.

These days it rains every evening. My flatmates, bored fro the daily routine of going to their offices are sending fervent prayers for torrential rains to come and flood the roads before their offices. The ideas is to get a rain leave. They may have their wish fulfilled pretty quickly.

I ran like a hare before the first rains. Poets and romantics have very obviously different ideas as to how we should welcome the first showers. What did you guys do when you first saw the rain of the season?