You get to do the strangest things on trips. Like shopping with Richard and Petunia.
Petunia had a bored look. If her nonchalance was studied, it was not apparent. Well done. The attention Richard got was ridiculous if you asked her, and she wasn’t going to indulge him any more than was necessary.
Richard, though, was preening. Young as he was, he was still learning the ways of people. He was incredibly good-looking and that department helped him in getting what he wanted.
If it bothered Petunia, she didn’t show it. She seemed happy enough to be ignored. Besides, Petunia’s doctor had advised her to go easy on her diet. She was clearly one of those queens who enjoyed being served luxurious portions at regular intervals without having to ask for it.
Petunia liked to think of herself as well-proportioned, but Richard liked to think of her as fat.
It really did not bode well for their relationship.
So, it really was no one’s fault.
Richard asked for food. Joanna gave it to him. She let him peck it straight from her hand, and those in the store looked on with awe. Richard really was handsome. His eyes and feathers shone: he was quite the bored aristocrat when I walked in. He came over and gave me a once-over and then strutted over to Joanna. She held out her hand with his food, and Richard pecked at it, making sure that we had our eyes on him – giving him the sort of adoring look he was used to.
I suppose after the fifteenth time that day, Petunia snapped. She still could not bring herself to exert herself and show her disapproval, but she did sort of snort. Richard understood, and pecked hard enough for the food to splash and roll out onto the floor from my outstretched hand.Richard ate it all up and then stalked off into rain outside. Just so.
Petunia gave him a scowl that said, “Good! Get a good soak then!”, and went back to snoozing on the billing counter. Bird food was nowhere as good as cat food anyway. Petunia knew that.
Oh well!
How often does one get to shop with a peacock and a cat?
I come to one of my favorite things to do as the year winds down. Which is to see all the different ways in which my mind has been kept occupied and shaped by writers who tirelessly work and put out the good stuff for people like us to just sit back, relax, and read. What was it that Carl Sagan said, “Books really are the best inventions of mankind” or something like that, and was he right?
“What an astonishing thing a book is. … one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
I saw this beautiful hotel building on a recent trip to Hawaii, and every front-facing wall had some sort of cuneiform inscriptions on them. Very becoming. Some were stick figures – some assorted sea creature shapes. They probably told a story, but I couldn’t stop to find it all out because I was being dragged across the street and being yanked up by my forearm to keep from tripping and falling (again). What I am trying to say with this rather meandering and pointless story is that the Hawaiian hotel may well have had the legend of Humuhumunukunukuapua’a there, and there was no way I would get to read it. (Humuhumunukunukuapua’a is a reef triggerfish and Hawaii’s official state fish)
Books, on the other hand, I got my dose of humor, facts, science, fantasy and history. I romped through the annals of British aristocracy, World History, US History, types of flora and how marvelous their cell walls are, all without stepping out of the comfort of my own bedroom. What can be better?
Still there is a sort of quiet happiness – the cave of quietude as Keats so elegantly puts it, a rather meditative sort of space where the soul expands. It is truly astonishing. Then, you read something that not only expanded the writer’s soul, but now the readers’ too, and before you know it, you are thoroughly entranced. Books have managed to work their magic through ‘the shackles of time’ as Carl Sagan so niftly put it.
Anyway, all this to say that I did my spot of reading in 2025 and now, I get to look back on them and make sense of the lists.
Narwhal – The Arctic Unicorn – By Justin Anderson Illustrated by Jo Weaver – Candlewick Press
From Shore to Ocean Floor – The Human Journey to the Deep – By Gill Arbuthnott Illustrated by Christopher Nielsen
Do Penguins Have Emotions – World Book answers your questions about the oceans and whats in them
In my tsundoku shelf: Playground – By Richard Powers, How Sound Travels,Life in the Oceans – By David Attenborough
Call it brain fog or a lack of forethought – but there were a few books that I had only a vague recollection of. I didn’t write little witty notes against their name, and I now have a bit of difficulty remembering the good bits. I suppose it happens – but I am happy that I read them all the same. I usually am.
Please share your lists of recommended books for the year. As you can see – there are loads to be written about, but I suppose I shall just have to chip at them as best as I can.
Here is to a marvelous year of reading for all of you in the coming year! May the force be with you!
Who said the e-revolution killed reading? Now we get to read all about how Kate Winslet once refused to wear eye shadow for a shot’s retake, and took a stand for all females the world over. Character matters more than looks girls. Remember that. Remember Kate Winslet took on all of Hollywood with her courage that day and redefined the industry. I think Julia Roberts might’ve done it too. Or was it Meryl Streep? I forget.
If you want to change the way you say something, go for it, Emma Thompson changed the way the industry thinks by saying what she thought one day. Even Audrey Hepburn proved she was more than a pretty face by saying something, You’ve got this.
We just need you to become famous, and then AI will make a courageous princess of you.
3 paragraphs or 300 words about it. Then, thousands of likes and shares, and you are well on your way.
We also know that Paul McCartney may have said good-night to his grandchildren when they stayed over with him. Now, what a wonderful human-being? If only, we all learned that the smallest words have the largest impact. Keanu Reeves also said something the other day. I am not entirely sure. But it all goes to prove that AI is watching and learning.
So, I have been saying goodnight to all things bright and beautiful, all things big and small ever since. I may have frightened the deer in the meadows one night, but – I learn from the best. Saying goodnight to fellow beings is a form of compassion.
All day everyday in our scrolling for your amusement and entertainment. The AI slop is generating, regurgitating, and filling our spaces. As someone who lamented the increasingly short ways in which we communicate, the AI slop seems to be doing the writing for us. Now, all we need is a chip to read it all, let us know what to think and just program it in seamlessly. The human experience bypassing the human.
It isn’t just about the words either. The other day an old lady took on a tiger. It went viral.
Inspired by her, an old lady in a rural village ran after her cat and is now recovering from a hip fracture. AI claims to have no part in it.
Cynical? Yes.
6-7
Come on! We can do better than that. We can give ourselves maybe a 6-7 on effort can’t we?
I cannot help but think how marvelous it would be to have AI bots as your students in a classroom. “That is not good. Try again. “
Voila!
“You are right!” It says. So mature, so humble, and so willing to try again. Over and over till the teacher tires of it. Such hardworking bot-kids.
I have seen children whine their way through a single sheet of paper for an entire hour.
That is what the human psyche is capable of. What’s wrong with 6-7-ing our way through life? We were doing perfectly just that till AI slop decided to come along and make us more productive. So, you want us to 8-9 our way through life now? What gives?
Rage-baiting
All you have to do is make a reference to a certain prime number in the 60’s. Eye rolls and exasperation follows – but I could see this leading to rage-baiting too.
Stop rage-baiting the hardly working children, AI Slop!
Parasocial
One word that reminds me of simpler times when we laughed at the bigger effort jokes. I remember the pater laughing well before he found the YouTube clip for me – he laughed through it all explaining every sentence the comedian spoke in that clip.
The build up to the comedic punch-line is as funny as the joke itself. “Do you really think you can arrest me for an expired driver’s license?” the comedian says on the screen. “Shall I make a call to Inspector General of Police?”
The traffic policeman freezes. “Do you know him?” He says.
“Yes – but he doesn’t know me!” says the c, and the audience collapses laughing.
I must check the number of times that snippet was played and replayed on YouTube for laughs.
Must we have a word for the kind of anticipatory laugh that comes from that long-ish sentiment?
Yes. Snaps fingers. Efficiency. Have you forgotten? Get with the times.
Now, the comedian needs to be stopped by the policeman demanding to see his expired driver’s license and he says, “Parasocial IG”.
Parasocial means: Having a one-sided relationship with a famous person.
Vivek did not redefine the industry with that 6-7-ish attempt at comedy did he? No, he worked through 6-7 retakes of that shot before they got it right on cinema. He rage-baited that traffic cop for a laugh.
Sigh! So what have all these words got in common? You ask.
They are all winners of the Word of the Year title.
“I shall put up some tarpaulin on the roof, and this will stem the water flow from the rains till we find someone to fix it.” the husband declared.
We had a leaking roof.
You know – how in the novels they tell you that you must show what happened, not tell you? I’ll just tell you and you will see. I slipped on the water pooled by the bucket by my feet. The rains were in and out of the house. Literally. There was a steady drip that was meant to drip into the bucket, but had managed to splatter outside the bucket. When the man announced his intentions of putting up the tarpaulin on the roof, I was attempting to clean the mess on the floor, and slipped. I barely managed to take hold of the stairs, thus saving myself from breaking my own neck. I might possibly have also saved my teeth from shattering. I count them all as wins.
Marriage makes you robust.
Now. We have many talents in the house, but fixing leaking roofs, plumbing, electrical wiring, aren’t even remotely in the vicinity of talents we boast about. In fact, we barely manage to put up an assortment of holiday lights every year. But still, the husband has this undeniable faith in his capabilities on all these fronts. With a smile, he embarks – a few dashes to the hardware store, a few YouTube videos, and a hearty dose of laughter infused with optimism, and you will find the man attempting to do everything.
One of our neighbors is retired and likes tinkering. He asked us what the husband was doing on the roof with a mild look of concern on his face. “Is he an engineer?”
“Err…Software Engineer.” I said. To which the husband piped up from the roof, “Though many years ago, I also studied Electronics and Communications Engineering!”
The neighbor still looked concerned. “So, not a mechanical or civil engineer then!” he asked. Sometimes, society is too polite. What he meant to say is, “So you are the kind of engineer who calls a mechanic or electrician to actually fix things, right?”
Several neighbors came through the course of the day with concerned looks on their faces. Some laced it with humor, others with alarm. It was an illuminating experience.
The Benevolent Roofer
The man in question, though was undeterred by public opinion – he sat there on the roof, polished off a whole thermos of steaming noodles like he was on a picnic, and waved to the people below. ‘Benevolent Roofer’ is the phrase that comes to mind. Folks on walks waved back. Dogs woofed. Cats meowed. Squirrels scampered. Butterflies flitted.
He then went on to spend 3 painstaking hours placing tarpaulin on the leaking section in hopes to stem the steady leak from the rains. We clambered up and down the ladder giving him a tile or two at a time to place on the tarp. ‘They are heavy!’ he panted, and I sweetly refrained from mentioning that they were actually only as heavy as the weights in our living room – the weights he’d bought to do weight training 5 years ago. I picked the weights up everyday to clean under them, but he never did.
The rains came that night. The tarpaulin held on the roof – meaning it did not fly away. But it somehow managed to find a way to pool more water into the weak spots. The next day, we found that where we had 1 leak before, now we had 3.
But like the children said to me when I said it will all make for a hilarious blog post, “Amma! Now remember! He is allowed to say he made it worse, you are not!”
Fascinating
We caved in with the leaking roof, and had a pair of competent roofers come and fix the roof.
It was fascinating to watch them. It had taken the whole afternoon for the husband and his support crew to place the tarp on the roof. He called several friends who all gave varying levels of moral support, advice and company via cellphone throughout the day. The man had the look of an astronaut in touch with his NASA team in Houston the whole time.
The roofers, on the other hand. They came. No fuss, no jibber-jabber: the pair of them removed all the offending tiles, replaced the leaking area and put new tiles on them in far less time.
What’s worse?
One stood in our garden and threw 7 tiles at a time, and they were all deftly caught by the man on the roof.
It took us a few minutes to stop gaping at the scene.
Never mind
That evening we stepped out. The sun was shining. The leaking roof had no husbands on it. The house inside had no buckets to catch the leak from the leaking roofs. The birds were chirping, the leaves were all showing off that they were as good as their east-coast-fall-color relatives. It was all marvelous.
“You know? I still liked that I tried to put the tarp on the roof!” he said looking far too pleased with himself.
“I quite like having my husband firmly rooted on the earth instead of on rooftops.” I said diplomatically.
The husband went back to his code, and the roofers went to their van.
“What do you think I should put up today?” the son asked us one evening. The daughter was home for the Thanksgiving break too, and we were making more noise than was necessary while snacking and exchanging the news of the day.
“How about this? Going …. Going …. “ I held up my phone, showing him some of my pictures of fall colors on the phone. When had he become this much taller than me? The beautiful fall colors glistened and sparkled, and I could feel my nerves dancing with the rays of the sun shining through them.
“Amma! That’s – there’s no need to be all poetic and cringe.”
“What’s cringe about that? The fall colors are going…going… but not yet gone. Huh?! Get it? Not yet gone!”
Scales of Cringe
He rolled his eyes. I swear his eyes roll more when his sister is around. I have statistical evidence.
There are categories of social media posts apparently. They fall in scales of cringe, try-hards, to meh. One child who wished her father a happy birthday was in the try-hard category. I found that unfair. “Come on! So sweet of the child to wish her father. You know? That reminds me – where’s my post wishing me on my birthday huh?”
The pair of them exchanged looks that suggested I’d lost it, and giggled some more.
“So what if you have a few posts on the scale of 6-7?” I said, looking as smug as it was possible for me to look, while attempting the cool, nonchalant look.
“On my goodness! Did you just? I can’t – okay! That’s going to be my post. My mom just made a 6-7 joke!” he said clutching his stomach and laughing.
My Mom!
I narrowed my eyes at the fellow. “There’s no need to say ‘my mom!’ in that tone of voice.”
He laughed some more, and the daughter ruffled his hair, looking proud.
“I am not sure I appreciate this your-mom thing being used as an insult.”
“I know your mom wouldn’t either!” the daughter said, cackling some more, and joining in.
I huffed and I puffed and drew myself to new heights.
The daughter patted me patronizingly on the head, and said, “Now now Mother! There is no need to be all small and mighty!”
I gave up. Newly minted high-schoolers and newly minted adults having ice creams with chocolate chips and melted brownies crushed up in them, cannot be expected to be sane. My mom would agree.
That’s when it occurred to me that the comedy writers have all moved to other venues.
Screenwriting
The writing in sitcoms is excellent. No chance for a joke is lost. The jokes themselves are honed, and planned, every episode polished with alpha groups/ beta groups, and by the time we get to watch them on our little televisions at home, the humor is top-notch. Starting with Seinfeld I suppose (personally, my humor sitcom experience started with Friends), Everybody Loves Raymond, Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Young Sheldon, and our personal favorite, Corner Gas.
I love it. I love the way a joke lands. I love the way the story’s narrative is held behind the scenes with out-loud laughs and merry chuckles along the way.
Standup Comedy
The snap humor in the standup comedy is there in reels, hour long stand up shows – it is everywhere. Talent is bursting at the seams, and it is all available for us to laugh. Instantly. The variety and availability of humor from comedians who are able to weave social messages with humor is truly astounding. Trevor Noah, Alex in Wonderland, Aiyyo Shraddha. Who are your personal favorites?
Book Series
But for a bibliophile who is looking for an equally funny book experience, it simply isn’t there anymore.
P G Wodehouse is credited with coming up with the first versions of sitcoms. P G Wodehouse himself acknowledged that many times he had wondered whether he should move towards who-dunnits instead. He was a big fan of Agatha Christie, and the money was really in the Mystery section of the bookstore – even then. But I am so grateful he stuck to humor. #ThanksgivingGratitude
Humor is one of the hardest things to write. So, I am glad to see the humorists moving to arenas where they can really be paid for the most difficult things. But the book world is really lacking a P G Wodehouse of modern times. Nobody has the time for a book anymore. Humor writing takes a long time, and is really quite difficult. Humor is a very serious business.
So, I understand why the humor writers have moved from books, but I miss it.
I miss books like those written by R K Narayan, Gerald Durrell, Miss Read. There are a few that still cater to simple pleasures and joys in living like Alexander McCall Smith.
If you recommend any really funny authors, please let me know. Comedy of Errors, Comedy of Manners, Comedy of Society, Farce, Satire- but in book form please.
It’s hard to not fall in love with rain-washed November mornings in California. I remember once as a child being asked to describe a sky of indescribable beauty and getting frustrated. The sky was blue. But it was a blue that was not just a color, it made you feel happy! What was the color of that blue?
I felt that way this morning too.
The blue made me feel the opposite of blue. No one who has experienced this blue would attribute sadness to ‘feeling blue’. So what gives? When language is not enough, maybe the fluttering of the golden thrush is enough. For that’s how it feels – to swoop and dance through the air.
The leaves are beautiful, star-shaped, hues of green, yellow, orange, red and maroon with little sunbursts through their leaves sparkling and shining to uplift your day. Peering through that riot of color to the blue sky – how does one describe that?
Prized Priceless
That’s when I noticed the helicopter flying low, and I peered up at it, and feeling like a toddler asked to point at the helicopter in the sky, waved at it. Of course, it was at that very moment that our empty suburban streets produced neighbors walking on the streets. I smiled sheepishly at them, and said, “A day that makes you want to wave at helicopters isn’t it?”
They exchanged a swift, almost imperceptible look of concern, and then being the kind folks they are, arranged their features to polite interest, and said, “I think there is a police chase going on. We saw several police cars earlier today.”
Oh.
If people ask me at the beginning of the day how I plan to make a prized fool of myself, I am not sure I could tell you. These things are not planned. There is an innate talent to these things.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I goggled a bit at them, and felt my cheeks brightening to match the color of the maroon leaves through which the sunbursts looked splendid.
“So! Have you seen what they are planning to do for the park?”
Adulting in November
I recovered and walked home, though, the nincompoop before this little social chat might’ve skipped home. Really! Sometimes being an adult can be very restrictive. I thought of Anne of Green Gables – I felt for this girl so much just then.
“Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it… yet.”
Just before I closed the door though, a beautiful butterfly and am engaging hummingbird seemed to understand what I was feeling as they flitted around the flower patch, and the trees nearby.
I watched them go, and then grateful that I got to step out at all, headed inside.
Feeling blue? Take a walk and wave at passing helicopters will you? The November world around us works like a charm.
Napoleon is in my kitchen making noodles before starting on his evening conquests. As far as conquests go, this one seems to make the emperor happier than a few hectares of land in medieval France.
There is a knock on the door, and I head outside.
A unicorn is needling the scary pumpkin outside while her super-hero brother stands petrified at the sound it makes periodically. So, I gingerly step past the moaning pumpkin and offer him candy. He beams in relief and gives me a look that says one day his superhero journey may save folks from moaning pumpkins – just not today. He takes one piece of candy politely, then looks seriously at the bowl. He considers the one in his hand, and switches it out to another one before shyly saying ‘Thank you!’
I wait for the fairies and princesses to come, my heart giving a little bump of joy every time the doorbell rings. One evil sorceress said that she was looking forward to ringing the doorbell when I opened the door before she did. I heard the pattering of steps and the squealing of voices long before her little group got to the door. So, I told her she could still ring the bell, and she smiled – vanishing all traces of an evil sorceress from her visage.
It is Elementary, Dear Watson
Halloween is here, and I found myself feeling a little wistful. The morning had been a reminder of all the wonderful years celebrating Halloween with the children. I drive by an elementary school, and Halloween mornings in an elementary school remind you that life’s best moments are in the silly and the spurious.
A duck and dinosaur, (a tyrannosaurus rex, the brain supplies from the recess of time) the same size are best friends chattering and crossing the road with a Duck Xing crossing. The lack of a T-rex Xing signdoesn’t seem to offend the dinosaur in the least, and good-naturedly the pair of them make it across the street.
The parents are all parked, scrolling on their phones, while waiting to see their children in the Halloween parade before heading out to work. One poor lady was on her laptop – reminding me of an irascible boss I once had. I remember this boss as the vampire sucking joy out on Halloween. Maybe this lady’s boss isn’t a vampire – but I don’t think so. Her pinched expression show how dearly she would like to close the laptop and take in the Halloween parade wholeheartedly, but cannot. Those of us with children have all tried juggling seemingly ridiculous things like this, but somehow I am still glad we did. All those years of elementary school parades seem to have swished past so swiftly.
Napoleanean Conquests
Back in the evening, I saw the unicorn fairy leave, and felt a pang. Halloween isn’t the time for time-travel, but everyday can be a capsule for time travel if you let Google photos have its say. I sat and watched photos from 10 years ago, 7 years ago, 5 years ago etc.
Later that night, Napolean showed me his candy stash and said with a politeness that stems from an excess of candy, “Please don’t throw these away! I will eat them – slowly a little everyday. Today’s haul was good.”
I thought the emperor would be buzzing on a sugar high, but apparently when you walk around the neighborhood for hours while eating candy it is good for the sugar. Huh! A few minutes later, I found his room lights on, and he was sleeping soundly, candy by his bedside, a book on his pillow, and a contented look on his face that said, ‘Today’s conquests complete!’
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
What will we fill our heads with?
This is an oft remembered quote for me. Every time I see patterns of behavior that I hope will be changed for humanity’s arc, I think of this. Sometimes, in order for things to change, it has to reach levels of intolerable.
Maybe that is where the attention industry will reach, and it this feeling of overwhelm that will herald in a new system of reward.
We had our hands full with survival in humanity’s infancy, we filled our heads with myths and legends of heroism, superhuman strength, superhuman abilities.
We evolved and figured out ways of relatively sustainable food sources, we filled our heads with epics, art, and music.
We figured out mass production, we filled our heads with science fiction and fantasy seeking out other planets, other environments.
We figured out how to amass our thoughts and search/retrieve with ease, we filled our heads with social media.
We are figuring out meta-cognition, what will we fill our heads with then?
Some days it isn’t the woodpecker who brings on the musing. It is the memory of a gas station.
The gas-station quandary
I had stopped the other day at a gas station (for gas – the clarification is necessary. These days we can stop at gas stations for milk, chips, entertainment and so much more) . Now, I don’t know about you, but I usually like to see the steady increase in the gas the tank is taking in. 12.00, 12.11, 12.12, 12.13, 12.14, 12.14, 12.15, 12.16.
A smile on my face when I see our car gulp in the gas like it’s a thirsty horse after a long run. The silly comparison makes me cringe a little, yes, but then I had seen a few horses trot in their pasture once just before stopping to fill gas, and often when the mind wanders at a gas station, I think of these chestnut beauties throwing their manes back and feeling the breeze.
But the other day, my attention was pulled towards a screen perched over the meter showing me advertisements on what they think should occupy my attention for the three minutes I was there. Combined with all the flashing billboards, and the moving screens, and the flashing games mobile phones are full off, I felt off-kilter.
How did we get here?
When did attention become such an important commodity that we sacrifice almost everything at its altar? Peace, quiet, steady study, calm, concerted effort – everything giving way to drama, loudness, frenzied movement, and quick reward systems.
What can be done so that the opposite is rewarded again? For it is clear we are driven by reward.
Can there be a small quiet reward to our brain when we quieten a loud intrusive distraction?
Bring in the horses
I smiled at that. “Monkey brain!”, I chided myself. Though I have to admit, I am not sure what the attention span of monkeys are. I hope monkey mothers are not yelling at their children as we speak – “Human-brain! Distracted all the time. Swing. Leap. Onward and forward!”
I forced myself to bring in the mental image of the horses I had seen all those years ago before getting to a gas station, and they came. Reluctantly at first. CNN was asking me to get affronted about something, and thoughts of monkeys and horses could not pull me away easily. But they finally did. They cantered into the mind’s eye, like William Wordsworth swaying daffodils, and the brain quietened down. The green pastures the horses trotted in bursting with flowers, and I felt a calm. By the time I pulled out of the gas station, I had needed help from a menagerie to pluck my attention.
What would it take to become focused on something so beautiful and deep, that nothing matters?
How many of you are flibberty-gibbets? What would the social order be to reward that and what would be incentive enough to disrupt our current trend?
I could barely sit still. Excited. Like a puppy waiting for a run around the park. Every few minutes, I found myself peeking out at the skies, and wondering whether the predictions were true. You see? We had been promised rain. The skies however did not seem to realize that our weather apps had predicted a 95% chance of rain. I genuinely do not know how they do this, but many times if it is a 30% chance of rain, the clouds may bother rolling in to salute the weather gods, but don’t want to go through the trouble of pulling on their grey robes, and just flit away.
This time they did not even bother rolling in. 95% chance of rain. It has to come – dance, spring, skip to the window. Nothing yet.
Sunny skies. D,s,s. Nothing.
A little breeze. Nothing.
When people tell you to keep your child-like outlook in life, I don’t think they realize how much disappointment goes with that. “We’ll go for a walk!”
When?
“Ice-cream?”
“Later. Once I’m done with work.”
“Done? Still? Not yet?”
It really requires enormous amounts of resilience. I salute you children – I really do. So, I peered out, sipped tea, and peered out some more. Nothing. So, I decided that the best thing to do was to be apathetic. Act like I didn’t care. Because I don’t. I mean, if it rains, I am sure, I’ll come to know.
Just as I thought the meteorologists really had messed it up this time, the rains started. I didn’t notice the dramatic shifting of the skies. The thunderous clouds rolling in. Like an efficient theatrical crew, the whole thing happened in minutes.
Then, the show started.
Oh! Was it good? It was amazing! I sat on my patio dancing away from the lashing rains, enjoying the sound of the water pouring down – beating against the broad leafed plants, and dripping down the pine needles. I watched the roses get drenched – rose petals with fat water droplets on them have to be one of my favorite things.
The son was equally thrilled to go to school that day. The biggest highlight was that his cross country runs would not be cancelled for something as trivial as rain, and he wanted to run in the pouring rain. I tried to make noises a responsible mother ought to make, but found myself excited for him. How can one not be excited about running in the rain with your friends?
I set off for a walk with an umbrella in hand, listening to the soothing sounds of the pouring rain, and getting a thorough drenching from all sides except the top where the umbrella tried its best. A friend of mine stopped her car to chide me, but refrained because I looked ‘far too happy to be scolded‘.
Plop! Plop! Plop! Surprise!
Later that evening, the son and I had both dried off and looked very pleased with ourselves with our little rainy day adventures. That was when I noticed. The roof in our house. The same one that leaked and had been repaired last year (but was never quite stress tested afterward) was not fixed. The pouring rains meant we had a puddle on the floor, and I found a little of my soaring spirit subsided somewhat.
But so what?
The first real rains of the season were well worth it! The sunset the day after was even better. So there! Happy rainy season fellow beings. May the Earth make a pluviophile of us all!
Nourish-n-Cherish 