Summer Rain

The days are hot,
The moods are bad,
The summer rains are a cure to all that.

It was a typical day. The sun was soaring high showing its full potential. It was the auspicious day of Sri Rama Navami, it was the day when my grandfather's condition was stabilizing after repeated number of attempts. After days of sceptical thoughts and cynicism amidst vague optimistic hopes of his survival, that day, on that auspicious day, he has improved.

His news of improvement for no specific reason has welled up tears in my eyes. Though it was something I was glad about, somehow it managed to fill in buckets of water in my eyes. I broke down, I finally broke down about the aftermath of his death. The only positive news I've heard all day somehow made me cry like I never had before.

My eyes were swollen, my mind was blank. I was standing in the balcony of my room, the hot breeze brushing against the sensitive, swollen skin of mine. Then, there it was, a sharp sound of a thunder. That's what I thought I heard, but dismissed the thought immediately as it was just the beginning of summer and the possibility of rain was like a blue moon night.

But then, like every person is wrong at some point of time, so was I. I was wrong, that was the sound of thunder I've heard. The sound which usually scares me, which usually gives me nightmares, gave me a strange homely feeling. I looked at the sky, longing for the moment when the first drop of rain would hit the ground. Then, finally the moment I was longing for has arrived, it had started to rain.

It started raining, that's when my dad told, it was an age old tradition to rain on the auspicious day of Sri Rama Navami. It symbolically tells that, it was the blessing in the form of rain, showered by all the deities in the Vaikuntam, on the divine couple of Sri Ramula varu and Sitamma thalli.

After listening to that story I had an unexplained bliss built inside of me for an unknown reason. I stared at the sun burnt walls and the ground, I stared at them absorbing every inch of moisture they could until saturation for they know that, they won't have any more opportunities until the end of this ghastly cannibal summer. The smell of the wet mud rejuvenated my sense of smell. It reminded me of my childhood memories, the multiple attempts I made to taste that deliciously pleasant smelling mud, the innumerable attempts I made to identify the exact source of that lovely smell. It filled my thoughts about my childhood and the innocent bliss of it.

Somehow, the summer rain, the showering of the deities, made my day. It somehow was a cure to all the unpleasant things, all the sadness I've been through the day. It cured me and my soul like it always did. The summer rain.....