Flashes and flashbacks

Like with most things I am terrified of, I can pinpoint the exact moment lightning began to scare the bejesus out of me.

I was in my early teens, and the mother used to teach in a school that ended a good hour after the brother and I got home. So as the responsible elder child, I was in charge of making sure the brother and I changed after getting home, ate our lunch, and (ideally) started on our homework by the time she got home. Which of course meant that we would get home, put on the TV, dawdle over our lunch, and then squawk and change five minutes before she would actually get home. (Oh, like you didn't know this, Ma.)

Good times.

Anyway, one afternoon, we were having our lunch while watching TV. I can't remember if a storm was already ongoing, or if it sprung up out of nowhere, but I do remember that our sofa was against the windows, and the TV screen faced the balcony door. And that it got darker as the afternoon progressed. And suddenly, out of the blue, a streak of lightning flashed across our TV screen, all the way from across that long living room of ours. And I'm pretty sure I grabbed my poor younger brother and screamed.

Not so good times.

I love rain, and I'm quite fond of thunderstorms. But lightning, to put it bluntly, frightens the crap out of me.

Last night, as I left work, after hearing about tornado warnings coming and going in various parts of the city, I looked up at the sky and saw lightning continuously flashing in the sky several miles away. In the direction I was headed. A part of my brain said it looked a lot like when the particle accelerator exploded on The Flash, but the rest of my brain kept having flashbacks to that afternoon all those years ago.

The odd flashback

A gazillion or so years ago, when I was still in college, I was walking from home to the neighbourhood market - in all likelihood, to visit the lending library run by the sweetest old man ever, who lent all books for 5 rupees for the first day, and 1 rupee for every subsequent day. Unless you were borrowing a Mills & Boon, in which case it was a flat 2 rupees per day.

Anyway, so I was walking. I got a lot of walking done during the years I visited his shops. But this particular walk has always stayed with me because I was walking past the park (which just proves how long ago this is, because that park was taken away from the kids who used to play there to be turned into a hospital or something because it was a legal mandate but then they abandoned the construction halfway through, so now this half-built hospital just sits there, empty, and someday they're going to make a movie where someone comes to visit their past and this hospital will be where they go first because they used to play cricket there or something and I really should stop digressing so much back to the walk), and suddenly I could hear rain falling. Which was weird, because it was bright and sunny and slightly humid and I definitely didn't have an umbrella but I wasn't wet either. But I could hear the rain fall. And then I walked two steps forward and found myself feeling the drizzle. I took one step back and it was dry. I walked forward again, and could feel the rain again.

I was reminded of this moment earlier today, on my drive to work. It's been windy and cloudy for the last few days, with stormclouds threatening to burst but never quite getting there. And this morning was no different as I drove. But then I turned right, and then got on the expressway a minute later, and suddenly my car was bathed in sunlight.

It was a nice moment.

The sounds of rain

I've mentioned briefly, I think, in the past, about waking up to the sounds of rain falling on the skylight back home. It's a soothing sound, one that usually made me snuggle in further into my razai and snooze a little while longer.

It's been raining off and on for the past week or so here. My classmates don't undertsnad my fascination and delight with rain; it makes them utterly gloomy.

Rain here brings out a tinge of nostalgia and homesickness in me. Why, I'm not sure, given that it's greener here, there are no traffic jams, and the roads can last beyond a ten minute shower.

But it annoys me no end that while I can hear every step taken by my neighbors who live right above me, the sounds of rain get completely shut out from my apartment.

When it rains

I'm sitting just outside our front door, legs propped up on another chair, and tweeting away while the rain pours down.

An hour ago, a friend and I walked out of a salon, both with hair gleaming like silk, and poker straight, feeling very nice and girly after a nice hair spa - so what if we've paid a packet for it. Half an hour later, we walked out of a cafe to see it was pouring cats and dogs, and not a single auto in sight. Our hair was ruined. We were drenched. And by the time we got home, the cold wind in the auto had made huge rashes break out all over my right arm. My friend was horrified. Me? I couldn't stop laughing with glee.

Rain does that to me. I've loved rain for as long as I can remember. There's something about the world looks after a good downpour. All seems right with the world.

The mother believes rain is auspicious. That if it rains on an important occasion, it's a good omen. So we've always been glad that it somehow always rained the day we moved home. The day we played the World Cup final. The day I gave my first job interview. The day a friend got married.

Sure, there are traffic snarls. And power cuts. And I have a terrible tendency to get stranded in the middle of nowhere. But the trees look greener, the earth smells wonderful, and my twitter timeline gets flooded with some gorgeous photos. And life feels good.

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain falling on our home's skylight. And it crossed my mind that that's a sound I will miss terribly when I move to another country in about three months' time. Then when I got drenched this evening, it struck me while I was laughing that I won't see a Delhi/Gurgaon monsoon for another two years at the very least. And the pangs of parting hit me again.

After the rain...

Was going through unpublished drafts of old posts, and came across this one which started sometime in 2007:

Have you ever gone to your front gate after it's stopped raining and looked at those droplets of water that hang from the grill? Have you ever tried to take them onto your finger and balance them there for as long as possible?

My brother's friend was having lunch with us recently, and he was rather bewildered at the debate my brother and I were having over our individual reasons for enjoying filling ice trays. Personally, I love seeing the way the water cascades over the squares while you keep pouring the water in just one spot. I think it's just fascinating.

The brother had some other very elaborate reason for loving filling ice trays, which I can't now remember. I do however remember the bewildered look on his friend's face, and his "But... they're just... ice trays."

I was on the phone with the best friend yesterday, and our topic jumped from serious topic to frivolous jokes, and back to serious issues, with the same ease a gazelle displays while prancing around.

I miss having such random conversations. There are very few people you can have them with.

Me Me Me!

Ten days ago, I completed a quarter of a century as a living being. In this lifetime, that is. I have no idea how long I've spent as a living being with all my lifetimes put together. Or even if I have had other lifetimes. Which really isn't the point of this post.

What is the point of this post, you ask? I'm not entirely sure myself. I got a new laptop you see (and before you start, that is PURPLE, not pink - the lighting was poor). And I wanted to put up a post from it simply because I can.

Anyway, so as I was saying, I turned 25. Now as a rule, I love birthdays. This year, for some reason, I was totally depressed about my birthday, to the point that I didn't even make my usual very detailed wishlist handed over to the family two months before the day arrives for them to treat as a shopping list.

I mean, 25. Isn't there something just so... milestone-y about it? Shouldn't I have done far more than I have by now? Or at least figured out what the hell my life is about? A bit?

Well, whatever it was that I was supposed to have done by now, I clearly haven't. I am therefore going to instead write this post. 25 facts about myself. Which you didn't know. Or did. Depends on who you are.

You may leave now, you know. If you're still here that is.

*drumroll*

1. I love Hrishikesh Mukherjee's movies. There is no other film-maker in the world about whom I can say that I have loved each and every movie made by him/her. My life's ambition is to get hold of the DVDs of every single movie he ever made.
2. My one regret in life is giving up singing classes as a kid.
3. Gmail's Label feature is the best thing that ever happened to me. I label everything. I have two Gmail accounts - one official, one personal. The official ID has just short of 250 labels, and the personal one has 450-odd labels. Seriously.
4. My favourite colours are blue and purple. Hence the laptop. Dell's blue option was too electric for my liking.
5. I know nothing about English music. Or any music actually. Unless... Does Bollywood music count as a genre?
6. I perpetually feel cold. The family hates having meals with me in the summer because I whine about the fan being on.
7. I have had a godawful allergy since childhood as a result of which I get these awful marks on my arms and legs. The dermatologist once described it as "hypersensitivity to mosquito bites". I call it a curse.
8. I love numbers. And Excel sheets with numbers in particular. Playing with them gives me a joy like no other. Back in school I used to get this joy when I would solve a particularly tricky math or accounts problem.
9. I wanted to be a teacher as a kid. Nursery teacher. Mainly because I thought Rani Ma'am, my Nursery teacher was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
10. As a teenager, this ambition changed to being a librarian. I thought it would be awesome because I could sit and read all day long.
11. I am not a people person. By which I mean the company of others annoys me no end. Spending more than a few hours with even my closest friends exhausts me. Which makes my choice of career a mystery to pretty much everyone who knows me. In my defense, I hadn't realised how much of a non-people person I am till I took it up.
12. If it wasn't for the fact that I love my near and dear ones, I wouldn't like them much.
13. No one, but no one, is allowed to criticise my family. Other than me. Even if you are my best friend, and I have spent two hours cribbing about them, you do not say anything against them. Ever.
14. As a kid, it was instinct for me to look at every single vehicle passing by on the roads, add up its license number, and check if it's divisible by 3. I still do it sometimes.
15. Sanjeev Kumar is the greatest actor to have ever lived. In my very humble opinion. Exhibit A: Koshish. Exhibit B: Angoor.
16. I'm a sucker for spoilers. The only two things I have always refused to look up spoilers for are the Harry Potter books before they released, and Lost. Yes, I'm a huge fan of both.
17. I hate yellow gold.
18. Equality of the sexes is a huge deal for me. Not just in terms of women getting the freedom to do what they want, but also in terms of men contributing more when it comes to household matters. I think it's important, and I have been known to get onto a soapbox about this issue fairly often.
19. The moon, butterflies, and rain are the themes figuring in most desktop wallpapers or site templates I choose. Which I'm guessing you know if you've been following my blog for a while now - you may remember the trauma I went through when I had to give up my rain template when "New Blogger" came into existence. I had to choose between keeping the labels option or the template - toughest decision in my blogging life so far.
20. Rounded off numbers are the most awesome thing ever. My obsession with rounded off numbers was at one point so intense that I would SMS friends last thing at night just so my pre-paid balance would be a rounded off number. Even today, the radio and TV volume has to be a rounded off number, and I refuse to stop the microwave till it's showing a multiple of 5. In fact, the only blessing I see about turning 25 is that not only is it a rounded number itself, but it's the square of a rounded off number. How cool is that?!
21. I have never quite got used to the whole concept of telling the whole world who you are, where you are, and what you do via your blogs and your tweets. It's something I'm still uncomfortable with, and most of my friends know that I'd prefer they didn't use my real name in the blogosphere.
22. I have a thing for tall and fair guys. And lawyers. I think it comes from watching way too much of The Practice growing up.
23. Imtiaz Ali's movies, in some ways, remind me of Hrishikesh Mukherjee. I have no idea why.
24. I can't read or write Bengali. In fact, when I visit Calcutta, my cousins make fun of my accent when I speak in Bengali. I am, in some ways, to Bengal what an ABCD would be to India. A born and brought up probashi, forsooth.
25. I have gorgeous hair.

You're still here? Wow. And you're not one of the two people I force into reading my blog everytime I put up a post? Double wow. And I thought I didn't have a life.

The universal conspiracy strikes again

I officially hate lizards.

I got stranded in the rain today yet again (what is it with sudden rainstorms and me walking on the road?). It was past 8.30 PM and not a single rickshaw on the road. I managed to reach a nearby market and take shelter there.

These poor moths were getting attracted by the light of the ATM, flying towards it, banging into the glass door and sliding down. And these four huge lizards were sitting there, waiting to bring out their tongue and grab the next moth to fall.

Ugh.

A useless lil' vent

Now who on earth uses Bloglines to subscribe to my blog?!?

Bloglines is funny, you know. One, I don't think I'll use it that often anyway, because why should I sign in there separately to read my feeds (is that what they're called? I'm little clueless about all this terminology) when I have Google Reader doing a very nice job for me, and two, for some reason they won't let me claim my blog. And believe you me, I've been trying every six months for nearly two years now - mainly because I forget all about it for the rest of the time. I suspect it's because of the whole old Blogger-new Blogger problem, because they basically don't accept my Gmail ID as my freakin' Blogger Username!

I have a cold. Because I got wet in the rain. The rain which apparently indicates that the monsoons have hit Delhi two week earlier than expected for the first time in 108 years. Which doesn't make sense to me at all, because as far as I'm concerned, there was no summer this year. It's been raining for months!

I had planned to vent about something else as well, and it's completely slipped my mind now.

I hate colds. They make me all miserable and lousy-feeling and drained of energy and even venting doesn't make me feel better. Sheesh.

Pitter patter...

Last week, I was going around asking everyone if it's supposed to be this warm in February. Today, (well, yesterday, really) I was asking everyone if it's supposed to be raining this time of the year.

You see, the thing about the weather is (as my wisdomous fellow blogger pointed out some months back), you never really know for sure what kind of weather you're supposed to expect, particularly in the between-season months. I mean, yes, we in the NCR know that May & June will be blazing, July & August will probably see some rain, and December & January will be freezing. What about the rest?

It's those in-between months when you don't really know what to expect. When the weather starts fluctuating like it has been for the last couple of weeks, are we experiencing a warm spell in cold weather or a cold spell in warm weather?

The last couple of days have been my favourite kind of weather - cool, breezy, the hint of rain in the air... Bliss! It's the kind of weather that makes you want to curl up with a good book, or go for a walk (with someone other than your utterly spoilt and indisciplined dog), or go for a long drive with the windows open, or just sit facing the wind with your eyes closed.

It rained off and on all through yesterday, in varying degrees, from drizzling to downright pouring. Have you ever stood under a building at dusk and watched the lights shine on the rain as it falls to the earth? Isn't it one of the most beautiful sights ever?

No, rain doesn't come without bringing its share of pitfalls. Lightning for example. And the fact that currently (and I quote) my "beloved friend is grievously ill because of it." But I refuse to get into those. It takes a lot to ruin my mood when it rains.