First rain, the slush, and the rush!
| Date :04-Jul-2019 |
Vijay Phanshikar:
The raincoat often played a funny game with the little boy. Actually, he loved getting drenched in the rain, no matter that he was just three years old. But then came the time to start going to school. And the boy got ready -- complete with his new bag, new raincoat, new everything. And then holding his elder sister’s finger, he went to the school.
The first day.
An eager day.
An anxious day, too.
No child smiled. And many kids actually cried the hell out of
themselves.
The little boy, actually happy to go to school without knowing what he was getting into, also started crying. The first day was over in a couple of hours. The kids in the nursery poured out with older children. The little boy was suddenly happy not because the school was off, but because it was raining outside and he would get the chance to wear the raincoat that smelled wonderfully fresh and new. Actually, he loved getting drenched in the rain. But the lure of the raincoat was special. His sister helped him to wear the raincoat as she wore her own. And together, they stepped into the innumerable puddles of rainwater and walked home. The rain pounded down. Inside the raincoat, the little boy felt safe and dry but strangely unhappy. For, the raincoat did not allow him to get drenched, something he loved so much. So many other kids also walked along, many of them without raincoats or umbrellas.
Fully drenched, they laughed and shouted and jostled with one another. And inside his new raincoat, the little boy felt sorry for himself, and angry with the raincoat and also with the sister and the parents. “Why should I be made to wear the raincoat?” -- he asked himself. He was sad and ready to cry. Home came, and the parents were happy that the little one back from school on the first day was fully dry. But as he stepped out of the raincoat, the boy screamed in exasperation. He could not get drenched in the rain, which other kids did. Was life going to be so bad during the school years? -- he wondered as he hid his crying face in Mother’s lap. Mother was soft and kind and said, “Oh my God, your back is wet. The rain must have dripped in through the collar which you did not button up well.
Oh! Let’s change your wet shirt!” The little boy was happy that finally, he, too, had managed to catch some of the rain on the back of the shirt. The raincoat, after all, was not such a bad thing! The little boy grew and grew up in time. But each time the first rain came, he chose to go out without the raincoat or the umbrella. For, getting drenched in the first rain is his first choice -- and the last.
Truly, moving around in the city either on the bicycle or a two-wheeler when the first rain comes is such a bliss beyond words! However, the journalist in the now-grown-old ‘little boy’ also sees how the city suffers from water-logging and the slush on unkempt roads and the mad rush of the people to reach some shelter to save from getting wet in the rain. Looking at all the rush and slush, now-grown-old ‘little boy’ feels a strange urge to write about how the city suffers. Life has taken him around the world and shown him how many good cities manage themselves so properly. He then grieves, why his own city’s authorities have managed to keep the city in such a bad shape!