Rainy day thoughts!!

15 May 2009

Its raining outside and Singapore-rain is very short lived unlike the rain back in my hometown in Kerala. Whenever I am in a relaxed mood on a rainy day, I walk back through memory lane and become a curious little girl eagerly watching through my window seeing raindrops falling from the roof top with great force on to the ground, replacing sand and making small pits along the borders of the roof on the ground, while some other drops making tiny crowns on the ground which I used to think could fit only frogs!! There used to be tall trees around the house and its different shades of lush greenery used to provide me an unknown sense of security. There was a tall cypress tree which used to bend with the heaviness of water on its leaves. All heavy rains used to bring me a fear that it could just break into pieces, but it never did.

In Kerala, raining whole day is quite common... And, if there is a break during those downpour I used to jump out of the house to touch the wet leaves, to observe if any plant is damaged in my tiny garden. I used to have my own separate garden from the age of 6, where me and my cousin, who had one himself, used to grow different flower plants and we had a great deal of internal competition on whose garden is going to come up healthy and whose plant is to bear flower first. :) We had tiny water channels inside the garden, which were tiny rivers for us... and the plants were majestic trees on the banks of those rivers. Rain used to fill our rivers sometimes making it wider uprooting some of our plants.

 One interesting thing to do after rain was to make paper boats and float it in the pitches of brown water under the coconut trees. We used to get great satisfaction watching it floating .There is a plant which catches the raindrops and retains its shape and its kind of sticky. We used to pluck it out and put it inside the eyes which used to give a very cool feeling. A yummy memory is the cashew nut which my grandmother used to prepare for us after the rain.The mouth watering aroma used to drive me to where my grandma prepared it.  She used to say that this is to be done only during rainy days. The nuts have to be put inside fire under charcoal and when it is cooked properly, only she knows when, it's taken out and the hard husk is removed. That is one of the few things I have tasted with 100% liking. As I grew up I used to get a feeling of sadness when it used to rain, a longing for something or someone...that's the age... Now, still rain amuses me, though not as much as that of a curious little girl who always saw treasures in nature!!