A Monsoon Love Story
She always used to say that monsoons are the best time to fall in love.
She used to say that the rains had a dual role to play.
That the sight and sound and smell of water as it fell from great heights were God’s gift, manna from the skies.
That every single raindrop that touched human skin, trickled down to the earth, kissed and slided past wide open leaves and entered the multitudinous craters and clefts and crevices of Mother Earth helped alleviate human sorrow as well as ameliorate the lives of the denizens.
She had come to her grandmother's place.
Imagine a girl, a slender girl dripping with innocence from every pore of her smooth as silk chocolate-dipped skin that frames beautifully the svelte contours of an hour glass figure, a body so perfect as if it were sculpted by the Lord himself.
Imagine an only child, born and bred in an achingly loving milieu, loved to the core by a retinue of relatives and friends and well wishers.
Imagine an impressionable girl who's just kissing goodbye to her teens and one blessed with the must loving of hearts, a heart desirous of all things beautiful, a heart wanting, and waiting to shower love; a heart desirously aching to be loved.
Distinctly do I remember the day, the hour…the moment.
It was as if it were yesterday.
The office had declared a holiday.
Was one of those annual 'go and enjoy at our expense' holidays, a trend quite in vogue in those days (here those days mean a good decade and a half ago!).
"Excuse me!, Which way is to the post office"?
I had turned around and looked.
"It's round the corner...the third right...there's a red..."
The words were lost in the aftermath.
"Get in. You'll get drenched".
Don't know whether she heard me or not, but the next moment she was standing beside me.
I spied her from the corner of my eyes.
What I saw blew me!
A dimpled perfectly round face, jet black curly hairs and clad in a pearly white kurta churidar and matching slippers to boot, she looked at me and smiled.
At that instant, heaven's gates opened.
A clap of thunder, a flash of lightning, and a burst of showers.
The next ten minutes we watched in utter silence the play of waters; an avalanche of acoustics unfolded at times a lion's roar, many a times the ear-splitting sound of giant froth filled waves angrily attacking the rocky shores, and sometimes the softest of touches ala a mother's soothing, caressing lullaby.
One such droplet eased out of her open palm and fell on my toes.
We looked down, we looked up, our eyes met.
And that's how we fell in love.
Many moons oops many monsoons ago!
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