A random summer weekday in the early 2000s.
It’s 7:00 Am, and I wake up with a start. I was LATE.
But, more than scared, I was surprised. Why hadn’t anyone woken me up?
To give a context, the general wakeup time used to be 6:30 Am.
Then it strikes me, there is a cold breeze and the unmistakable sound of rains. YES! It has been raining.
I get up and find my mother and to my utmost delight, she confirms something for me. I do not have to go to school because of the heavy rains.
And that was the importance of a rainy day in my childhood.
A simple rainy day could halt my going to school. Oh how I enjoyed that.
And I guess that is how my love for rainy days started.
Of course there were other aspects also. You could go out and play in the rain and get drenched without a single worry in the whole world. You could sit beside the window and stare outside for as long as you want to. (Unless you were called to have food of course. You always answer that call unless you had a death wish.)
Of course, the time that I mentioned about was a much simpler time in my life. There was no burden of expectations, no sense of urgency and above all, nothing else that I had to think about.
Things changed as I grew up. There was no halting going to school a few years later.
School soon became college. And well, with the freedom I had staying alone, I could have and did bunk classes when it rained. But, it came with some consequences.
College soon became work. And whether it rains or pours lava, work will be work, right?
So, as I grew up from the boy who was wide-eyed with excitement each time it rained to an adult, who longs to just sit by the window and admire the rains, during his work, the significance of such days changed.
But, still, there is a sense of comfort and nostalgia every single time it does rain. The way to celebrate the occasion might have changed from not going to school to sitting by the window and finishing some work, but the sentimentality still remains.
And I hope that one day, I will be able to enjoy these rainy days a bit like my childhood, carefree and without a single worry in the whole world.