Raindrops fallin' on my head

More like pelting, actually.

Ah....it's raining. Finally. Here in Salem. It's been raining for a week now and I am enjoying every minute of it. Until the moment I decide to step out that is.

Sitting in the reclining chair, with a hot coffee on the side, PG Wodehouse on one hand and some hot bhajjis on the other - I tell you, it's heaven, Man! And when I look up, I can see our local hill - Perumal Malai - covered in mist, giving it a kailash kind of a look. A bit of rain romanticizes and dramatizes everything around. A bit, I tell you.

There is something to be said about being outdoors during a nice rain and getting sloshed by every damn car that passes. It is not nice! The dirt, the mud, the filth and the crap. Arrgghh... they make a paste that never comes off.

And the trains hanging on bridges because of the rain, buses cancelled, men and women and children dead and dying, power broken, telephone out of order -and to top it all - diwali ruined.

I remember the times when I used to keep the crackers and mathappoos out in the sun for it to get crisp and dry so that they flare better and pollute even better. And I remember how aggravated I get when it drizzles. And it always does. I don't bother about those crackers these days, but I still worry about getting out.

Rain is god's urine - my friend used to tell me in school. And I genuinely believed it, staying out of it. God's or not, it is urine. And then, I learned that it is not God's urine, but men's, when they relieve themselves from airplanes. Freaked me out. And then my cousin comes over for one glorious holiday, and he imparts the wisdom that it is not real rain but acid rain. That being the only technical term he knew at that time and he told me he could taste HCl or some such thing in the rain.

People tell you all sorts of stuff to keep you from enjoying the glories of nature. But let me tell you, go out and get drenched, sloshed and crapped on, because rain doesn't happen everyday.

But remember this. Rains are an alien conspiracy to get you out so that they can abduct you and do strange experiments on you. Wicked!