Every time it rained, a little smile would curve up on her face. The first and most obvious reason was the rain itself, for she thought rainfall was the purest form in which nature manifested herself.
Every time it rained, she could almost feel the moistness permeating her body. It felt to her as though the rain seeped inside her, cleansing all negative thoughts, and replenishing these with fresher, more positive ones. She felt renewed after a shower, her thoughts infused with a vibe that left her feeling wonderfully good. She loved the rain; she loved the romance that accompanied it.
There was also another reason, a very personal reason behind her obsession with downpours. It was an event that had occurred rather recently in her life. Ever since that rainy evening a few months ago, no rainy evening, or to be very honest, no succeeding day, had ever been the same.
She remembers that evening as clearly as if it were yesterday. The monsoon had not actually arrived in the city, but that particular evening had witnessed a thundering onset, very literally. The monsoon, in Kathmandu, had announced its arrival this year with a clangorous thunderstorm.
She had been just about getting ready to get back home when it started to rain. Her day’s work was done, and she really needed to get home, but she had not been prepared for this unexpected shower. She did not have an umbrella with her.
She hoped the rain would subside, and left the office, got onto the elevator, and got to the ground floor. As she peered out the main door, she saw that the downpour had accelerated instead of abating. She could certainly never get home in such a heavy deluge, so she decided to get back to her office, and have a cup of tea while she waited for the rain to stop, or at least subside.
For some strange reason, however, she did not get back to her office. Instead she walked to the nearby pavement, and decided to wait there for the rain to stop. The pavement was sheltered, but the station from which she needed to pick up the bus to get home was a far distance away. She knew she would be completely drenched if she made an attempt to make it to the bus station without an umbrella.
All she could do was wait for the rain to stop, and she was certainly doing so. Waiting, as it rained cats and dogs all around her, beneath the awning the sheltered pavement provided her, until an unexpected male voice struck her ears. “Are you waiting for a micro bus?” asked this voice. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to share this umbrella with you till the bus station,” it offered. “I’m headed the same way as well, you know.”
His proposal wasn’t at all a bad one, considering the time and condition. There wasn’t the slightest indication that the rain would be slowing down any time soon, and it certainly wasn’t getting any brighter. Dusk had gradually begun to settle in, and the rain was pouring down as determinedly, if not more heavily than before.
She accepted the young man’s proposal with a slight nod. He’s not that bad looking anyway, she thought to herself, even as she smirked at the thought.
The rain was pouring down hard, and the umbrella wasn’t all that big. The two had to scramble for space under it. The bus station wasn’t all that far from where they started, but it was raining so heavily that their movement and vision were very impaired, and it took them what seemed like almost half an hour to complete what was otherwise only a five-minute walk.
The two could, in fact, barely walk. This strangely long walk brought the two strangers very close within a very short span of time. The evening was after all, nothing short of romantic, and the situation these two young individuals found themselves in certainly felt like a scene right out of some romantic movie.
While the guy held the umbrella with both his hands, exchanging future glances with the girl walking beside him, the two shared moments of fumbling embarrassment. Their eyes would meet, and then both of them would quickly look the other way out of sheer embarrassment.
The girl would fumble over words every time the guy tried to strike a new conversation. There were long periods of short silences, but these were not awkward or discomforting silences. In fact, they were anticipatory silences.
The guy would ask a question, and the girl would answer. She was not always perfect in the execution of her answers, but she would take a long, deep breath after having finished answering each one, hoping that he would start on a new topic right away. It was almost as if she was waiting to buy some time for another gulp of air.
It was remarkable that they were even able to understand each other through the downpour that surrounded them. It was as if they had created their own little world beneath the umbrella. While all around them, the monsoon rains blurred ground, buildings and sky together into impressionistic swirls of hazy colours, the two walked on; rapt and entrenched in the moment.
Almost unnoticeably, the two would, at times come close; so close that their shoulders would rub against each other, leaving both of them very aware of each other’s touch. They blushed, but there was no hesitation. No flinching.
As the two walked along, they could barely make out pedestrians scurrying along the pavements and streets. Vehicles whizzed past almost like flashes of light, and conductor boys screamed at the top of their voices, calling pedestrians into micro buses that did not need—certainly did not seem to be able to hold—any more passengers than were already crammed up inside them.
As the two neared the station, the fact that they would have to take separate buses to their respective destinations dawned on them. The two of them were headed in opposite directions, but somehow they felt like they would be seeing more of each other. Both secretly wished for the bus station to be just a little bit further than it actually was, but it was just where it was supposed to be, and so when the distance was covered, the bus station duly arrived.
A micro bus that would take the girl home soon came by, and she got in.
She had just gotten inside and sat down when the micro bus swept past. She waved goodbye, and the guy waved back in return. He was staring at her by now, totally oblivious to others around him.
He stared and gazed hard, as the micro bus moved on, before disappearing into the Kathmandu traffic. He was still standing under his little umbrella at the bus stop when his phone rang. There was a new message. “Thank you for the company,” it read. “It was a wonderful ride.”
By: Kumar Sharma