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The First Rains
Most of my childhood was spent in Bangalore. We lived in our very own cozy
three-bedroom flat on the first floor in an apartment building that comprised of
five others like ours. As compensation for living away from the street and facing
a coffee-brown wall encrusted with broken glass pieces, on the other side of which
lay two gleaming parallel steel rail tracks, what little area had been left
unpaved was bequeathed to us to be used as garden space (but in point of fact,
stealthily usurped by my mother in our position as first occupants and residents
in the building).
Resourceful that she was, she soon set about to creating her little hinterland
that she would retreat to at times when both my brother and I were at school. Our
father made only an irregular appearance seeing as he worked in a bank and hence
was vulnerable to frequent transfers. Within a matter of two years, our garden
boasted of dense vegetation ranging from the avuncularly gaunt Ashoka trees
that flanked the two ends further away from the verandah, a vibrant banana plant
which was often called upon for its large bifurcated leaves that we loved eating
out of, especially during religious occasions, the hibiscus plant in its fount of
scarlet red albeit odourless blooms of Miss Liberty and a veritable stock of
condiments from mint to cilantro to ginger. There was also the prodigal offspring
– the mango plant that never delivered on its promise of the newly budded
green fruit that would blush red at its bosom and emanate a delicate whiff
announcing summer much before the almanacs and the azimuth.
Summer would be gently nudged out by the onsetting monsoons and that was when we
were at our most delirious. Even though most of our summer vacation would be spent
at grandma’s house in Bombay after making the most exhilarating train
journeys ever with the Udyaan coursing through forty-seven tunnels from Pune to
Bombay plunging into a solar eclipse at the mouth of each tunnel and emerging
unscathed into young afternoon at its orifice, we would make it a point to return
to Bangalore in time for the first rains. Only in the last four years or so, have
the monsoons played so truant for back then, they were as punctual as time itself.
We would lie, almost in breathless anticipation on a Saturday afternoon, listening
to Semmangudi on All India Radio, sipping into our aluminium tumblers half-full
with hot pepper-and-cardamom tea though not without making the pretentious
slurping sound (the prerogative of the Brahmins), and stealthily watching for the
slightest activity in our backyard ecosystem usually that of the notorious
bandicoot going back to its shelter having laboured night and day scavenging for
morsels of rice and rotting crow flesh alike, as ominously grey clouds would
tumesce and screen out the signature filters of orange glow.
Rain would not immediately appear; there would first be preliminary engagements
such as the rising crescendo of gales whooshing past the trees intimidating the
lanky Ashokas though failing always, dead leaves swirling around and spiralling in
the dust kicked up while the ones newly-born take shelter within the deeper hues
of green of their cousins above and besides and house sparrows chirping and
dancing wildly to the banshee tunes in the air. Then, the faint patter of our
messengers from heaven is heard as they drop and wed the dry mud and out of this
confluence arises a scent that intoxicates the mind and steals all its cares and
frowns; the smell of earth on the first rains -- sweeter than musk, gentler than
rose and sandal, purer than camphor, earthy as the earth itself and loftier than
the heavens.
The first rains last for about an hour after which the white spongeballs make way
for majestic light to fall upon and bless the brown and murky puddles of water. As
if to signal the end of this wild lovemaking, the Tumkur Express would canter past
on those glistening tracks to infinity as its shrill horn blares and slaps the air
about.
For nine such summers and many an unknown August evening, we have been treated to
this mystic celestial show. As childhood gave way to adolescence, the summers grew
thinner and wearier – brief lapses of reprieve between frenetic activity.
Mother did not have the same time for her hibiscus and Ashokas but at least the
mangoes bloomed. We packed them in crates and covered them with straw and took
them with us to the desert shores of Madras.
