Rain on Me.

I am looking out of the French window of my closing-in room onto the gaping skies above-somewhere a long overcast stretch and then in intermittent smudge-a cotton fluff, streaked as though with lighter shades of black. Shades of black? Who could have thought! But alas, there’s always something intriguing happening only in between the two extremes-the black and white, the dark and the light, the day and the night! I look at the vacant seat beside me, pull my feet closer and then talk to myself and talk to the rain, attempting to whip the mundane.

They won’t fathom who only see the scorched patches on earth, not live with parched scraps within. I rummage around thirstily for rain to dim the Sun’s splendour and steal his silent thunder right from under his fiery nose, to hurl it across the corners of my earth like manna. Show him the brawn, for you don’t silently do your charge, you bloody well make sure everyone stands up and notices. Impede them in their paths if you must but not let anyone go untouched.

I have yet to cry in the rain like Chaplin did but having done that, standing in the washroom shower and watching the ease of the pain-I can barely imagine how purging you would be once in.

Am I looking at you or are the skies showing me, me? Turning from serene to stirred, from white to grey, from anger dipped bawls to action that follows-not just the thundering cloud, are we, but the bursting ones too? So ominously full of yourself one minute and then the next-howling, shedding endless tears, fearing the loss of how you were. Yes, rains fill you with delusions sometimes.

The clouds roar with blood-curdling rage and watchful, keen eyes, scrunch and look out, enthused and then waiting again to hear you transform into a gentle pitter patter on the roof tops. You are soothing to the eyes and ears, rousing all senses like new love that promises to douse in pleasure knowing it will eventually seep slowly into faded impressions.

How synonymous are emotions with your showers!

For some romance is evoked as though the water trickles down to their souls and pacifies the burning heat of heart aches, anger, jealousy and the likes. You raise dead passions for others-who remember being kissed in the rain and also those who pine for it.  That would be so life altering-a milestone that you may just want to settle at with bag and baggage. For a handful of fortunate others love is unwarily infused, when they share an umbrella or realize, how arrestingly mesmeric someone looks when water dribbles down the forehead or plays with wet hair.

You flow in love and like a nimble leaf floating along on your quivering ascend, the loved ones are carried through, effortlessly and naturally. You bleed into desires deeper than the earth and ooze out emotions wider than oceans. Yes, rains are mush and so much. Romance and rain are the eternal couple playing hide and seek, till they embrace and weep.

But then again, for some you stir the melancholy-the same showers become screams of wrath as the lonely heart feels the clouds mock his solitude. To look into the rain alone can sometimes be the toughest call.

I sit here by my window, letting the breeze pass through me. Watching the harsh sunshine simmer into a pleasing dullness that lightens, for in the offing would be dispersed layers of stubborn dust, cathartic washing away and eventual little pools of water gathering around, inviting my feet to jump onto them with childish abandon! The smell of wet mud wafting through the air, giving an ethereal feel to earthly life as we know it!

I waited for the storm to pass, I stood firm before the daunting winds. I waited for the skies to clear, for maybe because I was hoping for someone to walk in. Perhaps I was only waiting to throw my umbrella away and dance in the rain, even minus my dancing shoes. The springing of heart would give birth to the rhythm in my feet and lead me to where I should be. The clinging of my clothes would be a new feeling-I like the clinging maybe.

Would you please wash away my sanity-I ache to be insane?

Would you please balm my wounds, I pine to ease the pain?

What tears do to the eyes and mind, you cleanse the body and soul.

Come, drip, soak, drench and flood me!

The only thing sure about Love is-you'll fall again!

She found him in the flocking milieu, a face in the crowd yet one in millions. Their eyes embraced each other clinching, even before the rest of their senses could fathom why every pore in their being was joggled beyond restrain. The dance of passion was set in motion as their steps coordinated and love induced nimble bodies waltzed onto a nameless music. The accord emanating from each movement, the amalgam radiating with every posture! The intertwining of limbs not proof enough of how in their minds they were clung and wrapped.

The music played on and they did too till the beats became recurring, the sound seemed proverbial and the harmony predictable. The fervent steps were no longer animated and began to get weary and slowed down. They held on unyielding, not letting the fading music come between them, as though by being indifferent they could be oblivious.

Soon the moving record lost the rhythm and drew closer to a standstill. They did not budge, hung-over on the synchrony they had so reached. Doesn’t happen every day-two feet knowing exactly where the other is headed so as to stride along and not be directed by the other. So the drowning someone held on to the straw till the spot lights were shut off and darkness enveloped them. It was time to go-the centre stage, hitherto their field, suddenly seemed too vast and deserted-hauntingly mocking at the lonesome twosome to leave.

They parted and moved on. Faces going back to being faces in the crowd! They tried to call out and reach with an extended hand but perhaps the spaces in between became too big, too far. The unmitigated fire was now just a few simmering sparks before the coal pieces were charred to nothingness. But before the thwarted hand could reach back somebody held it tenderly and a warm prologue followed. A new overture, a beckoning gaze an unknown domain, was it time to play again?

But weren’t you burning? The scars of the one who left-weren’t the wounds open? Yes, they were but the stranger brought a balm of sweet whispers that echoed and stirred the insides again to soothe them. The hands held in a friendly grasp soon became a firm clasp, like little children laughing, engrossing and tumbling over each other while building sand castles on the sea side.

Yes, this was forever. The breeze playing impishly with their hair, the waves softly splashing a cooling wetness and awakening new-fangled desires, the hot skin gearing to burn with sensations that came without being touched. Was it love? Drenched in the sunlight, it seemed to have dispelled the darkness-the little castle they built vouched for things to come-a future together. Yes, we’ve found the one. And while he dusted the sand off her glistening body, they were ready for an encore.

How sweet was love again! How unimaginable the sense, it left the hungry body with! How charged it made one of a passion that can engulf all reason and pragmatism-knowing only surrender and wanting only completion! The love boat had found the anchor-the storms were at rest, the resistance failed at the test. Surely the bodies gave in, too overpowering-the thrill of the novel, the curiosity of the mysterious and the satiation of being lost in a utopia of stirred sentiments.

Till the waves grew tired of being placid and the breeze could not contain being stationary no more. The sand castle that stood sturdy slowly began to quiver as the agitated and restless grains decided to change paths again or go back to their origin. And the water that was wetting till now, took the form of an awakening-a rude splash begetting them back to reality.

The heat of the sun threatened to tan, the waves came too ominously to break upon the unfaultable shore and the rains followed. The castle was now a sloshed mass of nothingness as they rushed in to seek shelter. Relegating to different and distant corners, perhaps one took to dry up too long, perhaps the other wanted to remain wet, the seeking eyes didn’t get the glimpse they craved for and tears welled. Ah, the pain of seeing something gradually relegate to a backdrop which had instantly formed your fore and core! Another broken heart-would it not tear you apart?

And just then someone extended a piece of cloth-tears are not enough to do away the pain. Perhaps brushing them away with a handkerchief would? You look up-a beaming face, a concerned voice, a gentle pat and a fascinated someone-it was time to try to smile once more. Perhaps what was the end was really the commencement-THE beginning? Enough of stories that have a beginning and no middle and then an end!

The only thing sure about love is-that you will fall again!

When Shahrukh miffed me...

In the year 1995: I was on the threshold of Standard 11^th and on the verge of spilling out of my charged up frame like peas from a pod, in view of a class trip being planned for us. It was time to break the shackles of a hitherto secured life even though they were more in our heads than on our wrists or being. In a convent discipline with perpetually panic stricken and easily scandalised nuns, no out-station school trips beyond Lucknow from good old Kanpur, had ever materialized, the fears being-what if the horrendous wolves of the horny world pounced on little goslings out of St. Mary’s? Little did they know many of these goslings moonlighted as prey hunting little vixens/tigresses whenever away from the prying eyes.

So, this was a dream come true-never mind if they were taking us to one of the lesser known hills. Everyone got permission-except good old me yes, even the oil-drenched, plaited with ribbon haired, far-from-chick chick. Ironically, just then either mid-life crisis hit or my mother’s lack of action in the sack erupted in this hideous outpouring or my dear sire had a split personality attack-but Amrish Puri’s character from that year’s just released Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge vehemently entered all his pours. Damn, I always knew he secretly wanted to be an actor, like me, but Amrish Puri, really!

Papa’s unfaltering “NO” echoed through the walls of my home and my little but massively dreamy, broken heart. “Keh diya na, bas, keh diya” was HIS original dialogue that Salman bhai later copied, tch!

I begged like Simran to let me go-a bunch of my friends came over making the cutest and saddest puppy faces with justifications like “Uncle, Suruchi ke bina hum sab bore ho jaayenge”. But not one hair vibrated in his staunch moustaches in pity. Me: Bau ji, er, papa, you would anyway get me married once I join college. Let me have this one first and last trip where I see the world? ‘the world’ here being some polluted riverside with dumped plastic wastes and ample of just Gorkhas for eye tonic during that off-season time.

Playing on the back of my mind was the fact that perhaps I meet my Raj somewhere, filling an empty bottle by the river side when my chappal accidently slips off and I gracefully scream “Bachao, bachao” for my chappal of course. And he drops off his backpack and risks his life to get it from the swiftly flowing current, looking wet and sexy, as pearls of water stream down his glistening forehead to his almost parted full lips. He hands it to me with a sneeze-the chappal again of course. And I say, “Arrey, aapko to sardi lag gaye hain....” And no, I do not do a striptease then to give him jism ki garmi, you dirty minds, I tear my duppatta and...oho, let’s get him injured and blood flowing instead to avoid technical glitches. I would apologize for the trouble with a grin that would show no sorry and he would say, “Chote, chote shehron mein aise baatein ho jaate hain Senorita”. The rest as they’d say would have been history!

Playing on the back of my father’s mind was khandaan ki izzat and jawaan beti ko akela-nahin, nahin! He probably had gauged also that considering the tharki genes in our family, it was better to keep the daughter out of temptation and mischief. So no “ja Suruchi ja, jee le apne zindagi” happening there. Oh crap!

Dear Mr Shahrukh Khan, the moral of this story is that because of you I never went to any school trip ever! For you chose to star in such a film that my parents took me to and developed unrealistic ideas along with some of her own of their daughter’s. And because of you I often speculated in the hindsight that I could have created an immortal Heer-Ranjha type of love story had I just gone out that one time and ran around some sarso ke khet  in a white suit with open tresses and undone eyebrows. Par alas, aisa ho na saka!

DDLJ spoilt a generation of girls in that era. We craved to say “Kuch kuch hota hain Rahul, tum nahi samjhoge” forever after  I know it was not from this flick-weren’t they anyhow all the same post that? Any Tom, Dick or Harry with the name Rahul, suddenly had vistas of opportunities and legs opened at his disposal.

Even I led a make-belief life after that for a long time where I imagined bumping into Mr Right at the drop of an eyelid everywhere possible:

At the library-Imagining me fall from a ladder and someone there to catch me not bothering about my weight for love at first sight would weigh him down more. Or he and I picking the same book from the opposite sides of the shelf following the smiles-ah! I know filmy, sue me!

In the trains-Getting into a wrong one and being led by a handsome stranger into an adventure of sorts-damn, there was even some mind blowing session imagined in the pantry.

In the park-When a football comes and hits my head as I wear glasses and sit there on a bench concentrating on a geeky romance novel-little did it matter in the pragmatic world that I didn’t wear glasses or ever read any romantic trash.

*Sigh, sigh!*

And then Shahrukh also gave us some unreasonable expectations in men...

1. If he did not look in your eyes and said whatever he said with as much intensity as though he was mentally orgasming as Mr S did on screen, he did not feel it.

2. If he never spread out his hands with a slightly tilted head, when he saw you coming from far even without the slow motion, he does not want you enough.

3. He may look stupid and shaggy but mouth sense.

4. If he did not talk in whispers sometimes just near your ears, he is thoroughly unromantic.

5. If he did not overact-wtf, he’s boring!

6. And when he held you in his arms, if you did not tremble like a fragile leaf hanging on a branch in the face of an overbearing lust storm-he is thanda!

And just when we started to like Shahrukh for the loyal husband that he was and good character, K Jo made his entry and suddenly we did not want a partner like that! Tch, kya Shahrukh! You made vanity a style statement and narcissism a way to be-aped by thousands of men without mettle, shakal or akal. And who had to bear the brunt-we poor women, who didn’t know whether to bang our own heads against the wall or of these jerks when the stuttered or smiled in that obnoxious way that you sometimes do.

And when I did begin to like you a bit as my angry nostrils finally relented to flare less after Swades and Chak De, you managed to wash out all teenage fantasies with films like Om Shaanti Om, Billu Barber and Rab ne Bana De Jodi.  I was back to being angry for making me go through these mind numbing tortures that would warrant years of therapy to sublime it.

And although now some seventeen years have passed by, the after effects of waiting for a Raj for the happily ever after-the wait for a Casanova to turn into a one woman man because he is enamoured by your charms, still lingers!

*Sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh, sigh!*