Tuesday, May 13, 2008

first rain 2- a walker i am


It was one of those days I would wish my mom wake me up… as she used to before my sis happened to us…wrapped in her cotton sari in Bengali style she would spread her arm to fetch me and I would refuse, turn around and say… nah I want papa to wake me up and she would laugh… papa would join her… and say “O my child wish me to wake her up”… and I would refuse again and rush to mom… the daily drama to delay the waking up….but today was special I wanted her to do that again after a gap of almost 5 years and I also wanted to be the first one to fetch the news paper that day thinking that I must be in the list of meritorious students…(not knowing that if I had been… they would have come the last evening to interview me). I was sure I am there… so sure that I refuse to get up till Ma gets me the news paper… she pretends she forgot as if she knew everything…
She was busy so I behaved matured and got up myself… my milk was ready.. my dress was ready(the magenta and white polka dot dress… mom has excellent choice for clothes). I saw the preparation and forgot about the news paper 9i have a very short attention span. Jumped wow! Looked outside from the big windows and it was cloudy… some would think gloomy but clouds make me happy specially those gypsy ones ;) … right from my childhood.
I rushed to Ma… what’s special … she lists “kheer, poori, kachori, aaloo sag everything that you like but when you will come back; now rush and get ready it’s the results day”

Oh yes! Oh yes today I am on top of the world… I didn’t bother to look at the news paper.

I reached my school… rushed to the class teacher who was busy sorting sweets... Big laddus …. Mmmm she is Seema didi … looked the most beautiful to me with her big bindi and tant sari… she looked at me … smiled and asked “didn’t your Mom come along” I nodded “nah”. I don’t know why I never though anybody should accompany me anyways… I always went alone to school nobody ever dropped me except in some urgent circumstances, and such were very few to make any memory of them.

I kept looking at clouds for long everybody was in strange mood… for some reason I felt I am less celebrated that day… I was puzzled by the treatment…but too happy looking at clouds to understand anything… rumors all around… they tell me how only S N got a place in list and how N S (not me) overnight got her position cause she has contacts… I was too young to understand or too busy to stare at the sky and the rustling clouds… I wasn’t bothered … what I was bothered about were laddus … I kept planning how to get more and told Didi since I must have scored the best I should get more…

It was when I got my result it started to drizzle … so as soon as I got my result I put that in to a polythene bag wrapping it carefully I forgot to look at the scores … all I was thinking of was … how to keep it safe and still enjoy the rains… so as soon as I thought I am done with safe keeping I was out in the rains… came out of the school building I don’t know why there was no arrangement to send us back… or maybe I missed my rickshaw wala… so I walked out the lane of Budhapara… reached the circle all alone (or someone with me… no memory). Asked some rickshaw pullers to come to drop me… they refused as it started pouring real hard by then… I am not a person who can wait so I started walking towards my home in rain… the first rain of the season…
The message of monsoon knocking doors… the rain just before my birthday…
It hit me softly tup tup… put put… and tupuk …. Traveling through my magenta and white polka dot balloon shaped frock… terminating in to the rushing channels around my black shoes… I walked… and hopped to disturb the flow… my socks got soaked in the muddy water and I hopped… and I hopped… my way to home…
Tupuk tupk jhaaaaar…. Rush rush…. Guzzzz… water …water …everywhere… and I am on my way to home….

I walked for 5 kilometers in 2 hours of mesperising, enchanting, gurgling, blopping rain… it drentched me… through(donno how I saved the marksheet… no memory)..
I walked looking at the sky so every pot hole disturbed my walk… and I walked sometime falling on to my knees sometime bending my ankles… on every pothole…

It was one of the best walks I ever had… I loved every leaf washed in the rain that day… every scene was beautiful… every moment was new… and I loved it …

I reached home and found Pa is back… Ma changed my clothes… while I narrated every incident since morning to him including my walk in the rain… he was laughing listening to my stories … wrapped me in a Rajai to warm me … I kept on blabbering everything important and unimportant and there were celebrations …. All eating giggling merrymaking…and in all this humdrum we forgot talking about the results…. In our family no one talk about the results but events…

This first rain was important to me because this day I realized I cannot wait for anything… and for sure a bus… I would start walking instead…a walker in me showed that day… I also realized a great quality of my parents… they never looked at result but celebrated the efforts… I knew then and I know now I am blessed…

4 comments:

rUpiE said...

:) muah !!!!

nehasaraswt said...

muahhhhh!!!
thanks

Sonia said...

wow! lucky girl ;-)
if i were in your place i would have first been scolded for walking alone in the rain, and then the holi-colors in my usual marksheets would have got be more of daat-dapat...hhaha

nehasaraswt said...

ha ha ha... i donno for what reason... my parents never scolded me for such crazy things... not only me my sis too never got scolded to be seated on a jamun tree(which is supposedly weak to climb on) all through the rainy season(actually almost all year but its dangerous to climb on in rainy season perticularly)... i still remember how she used to escape and hide up there never to be caught.... ha ha ha