a rainy day

I wish this rainy day would have come in my life some 16 years back. At least I would have scored some brownie points for writing such an interesting essay when the exam paper asked for it.

Yes. You guessed it right. Today was ‘the’ rainy day of my life. So, how it started? Well, we planned for an all-girls food-fun-frolic outing today. It was a bright sunny day until those ‘kaale badal ki parchaiyan’ engulfed us. After coming out of the Pizza Hut, all we could see was one auto. It was raining cats and dogs and we – the stupid fools of the story were not carrying any umbrella with us.

Perfect Hindi-film scenario. One auto – five girls – heavy rains. Great excitement. One of the five fools started singing songs like ‘sawaan barse tarse dil..’ Till then it looked sober. We never, in our wildest dreams, visualized the near future.

When we reached the bus, our looks resembled to that of a drenched cat or may be a scare crow. Three girls got down from the bus and danced like heroines-on-the-road. Dance over – journey begins. Oh well, the moment we reached near the DRDO office, all we could see, feel and witness was water. More and more water. And more water. Lots and lots of water. People on the dark streets were standing holding the lamp-posts, cars were half-immersed under water, a few men were struggling to create holes on the walls for the outflow of water, gates thrashed by the force of water, buses not moving an inch and the rising water level raising the blood pressure of all those who were stuck.

Life is strange you see. When such serious and severe things are happening around you, you tend to find some really peculiar people to show you a complete different picture. Some Madonna-in-the-making kinda people starts singing rain songs, some 60’s ka predictable-heroine kinda people starts talking about burglars coming and attacking the bus, some panic-queen kinda people keeps shouting every now and then for any and every reason and some jadoo-type alien, anomalous person like me sits there staring at them predicting their next move. But even God couldn’t predict what happened next. A stupid-faced guy (in Bengali my word will be ‘kelane’) got down from the bus. Went near ‘the’ place where the water was flooding in its full force and started clicking pictures. Someone needed to remind him that DRDO was NOT the right kinda place for his picnic photography or his adventure photography (whatever his intention was). The cops catched him, snatched his phone and was just going to take him under custody when the great-guy came up with the greatest solution. He came back to the bus with an expression “Look, I won the battle.. Be proud of me people, I did it..” and he shouted with a face-full of smile, “you know, you know, I went there to click photographs..hehe hehe.. they saw me.. hehe hehe.. caught me.. hehe hehe.. snatched my phone and threatened to arrest me.. I just gave them my memory card and came..” and then the crowd goes, “hehe hehe..”

Oh well, it was some night. So many emotions I went thorough in a span of just 3 hours. Excitement, compassion, fun, fear, twinge, sympathy, glee, worry – too many to count. But at the end, it was a happy ending as we reached campus safely with a memory that will be etched in my mind for years to come.