Nostalgic yet again:

The rains finally came in the afternoon. When it rains in my part of the city, it means that the whole city and surrounding area are also rain-soaked. For the past few days, dark clouds used to gather and then blow away leaving this part high and dry. I stood outside on my balcony and felt the rain streaming down my out-stretched arms. The song ‘O meri jaan’ from the movie Metro playing in the background somehow replicated my mood. I looked up and saw this little girl doing the exact same thing I was doing. Suddenly she looked at me, our eyes met and we both grinned from ear to ear….we understood each other perfectly….we were euphoric. I looked around, no other kids in sight…all probably inside watching cartoon channels or playing games on mobile phones.

I looked at the girl again playing now with a bucket and remembered all those days when we would all rush out at the first sound of rain and get soaked to the skin and come back home to pakodas and chai; how it used to become so difficult for us to concentrate on what the teachers were saying as the rain drummed outside and we itched to step out and get drenched during lunch breaks; listen with a strange dread and fascination to elders tell flood stories, hear frogs croak way away into the night, chase dragonflies and catch fireflies; check the water collected in the bright orange and yellow Canna flowers, collect rose petals that would fall down and search for the paper boats that drifted away in the water that collected in the garden.

Suddenly, the faded smell of smoking wooden charcoal drifted in from the iron-wallah’s shack and I was again taken back to all those rainy trips in the mountain. The musty rooms at Binsar and an empty mossy dark world outside, the clouds coming in at Dharamkot and mixing with the smoke from the kitchen, the cloud covered valley below in Sikkim with the stars shining brightly above, a muted but distinct howl of a wolf on a rainy night in the wilderness of Ladakh, the smell of the wet wood burning while watching the last rays of the sun falling on the snow-peaks at Tirthan, the smoke from the angithi placed in our rooms at Kufri while it snowed outside, and the yummiest smell of skewered lamb pieces being roasted on a thela in Kashmir.

I was filled with this deep yearning…to hit the road and just go….to the mountains and the streams. Just the thought of being near to the mountains brought so much solace to my restless heart.

But now I will miss them so…..wonder just how much the sea will be able to check my itchyfeet. That sure will be a daunting task.