Weather I like it or not

Courtesy: http://themetapicture.com/reflection/

A week of unstoppable rain. Four days of house arrest.

Anyone who knows even a little of me knows how much of a romantic I am.

And yes, true to the cult of romantics, I love the rains. I always have. But for the first time in my life, I almost wanted it to stop. Perhaps personal and professional pressures have mounted up just like the laundry pile sitting in the corner of the room. Look! A shirt sleeve menacingly juts out of the filled-beyond-capacity laundry basket. If you've watched at least one horror movie, you'll know what I mean.

If all I had to do was to sit by the balcony and stare at the rain, I would have loved the rain and would have been so much in love--with no one in particular. (We romantics never need a real person to be in love with, okay sometimes.) I now get to visit the balcony only to pull out the half-dried clothes and to pull away the junior dreamer, muttering fear-inducing words like cold-fever-doctor-injection.

I would have loved the rains if I had someone supply me with hot snacks and tea. Forget dancing in the rain. The only water I came into contact happened to be freezing cold soap-water. The only things that blossomed in the monsoon were the callouses on my palms with all the dish washing.

Oh, all that kitchen work and the baby-sitting made the weather even more gloomy. So I yearned for and earned my TV time. The family was nice enough to hand me over the remote. So I plonked in front of the TV, rubbing my palms in eager anticipation of a cheesy rom-com or some classic. But TATA SKY did not think that way. It just sternly asked me to wait till the rains stopped (in 3 clear bullet points). Ah! Now I understood the family's generosity with the remote. Hmph! Not one to give up so easily, I sulked and pouted. The untouched DVD collection was raided. The Malayalam classic Balayasakhi was fished out. A sordid formula: Kolkata rains + Kerala rains + 1 broken leg + 2 broken hearts. Even Mammoty's handsome face couldn't save me from drowning into further depths of grey. (The leading lady was so wooden that they could have made an entire prosthetic limb for the handicapped protagonist using just her face.)

I then crawled to the book that I've been trying to finish reading for almost a year now. Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul. Suddenly his huzun (loosely meaning melancholy, a word I had begun to love) made me whimper.

I politely shut the book and turned to the window only to see a 3-feet deep wading pool on the road - I shut the window with not-so polite words.

I don't know what the weather's got to do with nostalgic trips. This time I had an entire odyssey by itself. Thankfully, I did distract myself with work. And quite a productive distraction it turned out to be, as long as it lasted.

Make hay when the sun shines is one thing. But the motto of the anti-ruling party TV Channels seemed to be 'sow seeds when the clouds burst'. And the TV Channels run by the ruling party pretended as if it were all fun and sunshine (pun intended). However, talking about TV news, I firmly believe that what happens at home should stay at home. It felt terrible to see Chennai and its admin 'lords' being ripped apart on National TV, especially hurtful when it was done by a charming home-grown boy on CNN-IBN.

The lightning, thunder. The noise of the winds. The drone of the mind-chatter in the silence of power-cuts. My rebelling hormones. Flooding everywhere. People living in danger. Cumulative effect of the cumulonimbus, haven't slept well in days. Greydarkgloom.

Day 4, I woke up to see a few rays of sunlight sneaking their way in. Water-droplets on the balcony grill gleamed brilliantly, cheering the sun, as it were. Dear friends from other towns sent me sunshine in jpeg format. The stagnating water outside my house started receding. The romantic in me slowly stretched, yawned and opened her eyes lazily.

Though romance and routine don't get along very well, I have come to agree that there is indeed some comfort in routine. The house-helps are back. I am back at work. The ear worm has finally wriggled out. I now look forward to only two more sounds - the chime of the school-bell and the whir of my beloved scooter. And perhaps a little pitter-patter?

Courtesy: http://i.imgur.com/jZqlp.jpg