Rabba rabba meeh barsa!

          Rain after a scorching summer season is a shared fantasy of the earthlings.

          As a child, I remember standing on our rooftop among my siblings, looking at the shiny rim of a patch of dark clouds. We saw not one spell of rain, but a whole lot of a rainy season, packed in that thunderhead. For a young'un, a set of approaching nimbus clouds means much more than just a series of showers. He bathes in it, makes paper-boats and shoots them off and he can also take that incomparable joy of getting wet deliberately by jumping, rotating and dancing.

          Being the eldest, I had some command over my fellow siblings. In the perkiness of childhood, we together danced in a ring and sang, ‘Rabba rabba meeh barsa! Saade kothe daane paa!’

          Well, as I sit to recall that experience, I do not, despite efforts, recollect the successive events. To my memory, and to that ten-year old me, whether it rained really or not was not of much consequence. The process was a pure, complete joy in its own.

          Today when monsoon approaches my city and my rooftop, I do not find myself singing that song. Nor do I dance with someone, requesting those clouds to come faster. I simply stand with my weight against the parapet, my elbow on its surface, my palm supporting my chin, in retrospect and thinking of that time, thinking what is amiss.

          This teaches me a deep lesson in philosophy. The same thing can mean ten thousand things to one thousand persons. A farmer awaits rain for the benefit of his crop. A man of street awaits it for it will bring some respite from the whiles of loo. Some other man may be looking for clouds for they will bring water to his taps. The poet and the painter may look for inspiration, and the storyteller may look for a story. Well, a child … there the clouds are awaited just because they are another thing to love about the world. Maybe there is something about the shape of a particular cloud … maybe it looks like the most prized teddy bear…

          I often find myself complaining about everyday things. The weather, the news and the like… When I was younger, I used to care, but not so much that it started vexing me. This makes me wonder: the pair of glasses on the bridge of my nose makes me see clearly but not necessarily rightly. Hence I also wonder: do I need to do some refinement with my vantage point? Do I need to redefine my priorities? Isn’t there some demerit in approaching things in a single-minded fashion?

          And this is what I conclude: I need to look at the clouds as the nature made them. If I were the rightest, most just God, I must have made the earth as it is now, because when I think in a silent solitude, I start finding a mystifying perfection in everything.