Leaky clouds and an improbably happy me!

In the UK, gloomy is gloomy. In Tamil Nadu however, gloomy with the smell of rain is almost as good as nature gets.

After a hot summer afternoon, struggling to manage all the shuttling between my hostel and the Instrumentation and Control Department, I went and sat inside the Control Engineering lab for a (yet another, grueling) lab session! And as I sat there, busily(!!). I was running through my mind on how I would talk to the professor who was planning to penalize me for having low attendance in a course. I was desperate. I was imagining staying back on campus when everyone else left for 70 days during summer! I was feeling angry at myself. A rage was tunneling through my veins but it suddenly stopped dead only for me to realize that there was hardly much that could be done.

“If she says you need to do it again, you need to stay back, Deepak! You need to complete the course. You don’t have a choice” I said to myself. “Pity yourself! But seriously, shame on you!”

I was distraught. I was helpless. The summer looked like a dark time to live in and my life seemed to be full of gloom.

That’s when the weather and my mood got interchanged. And before I peeped out of the window, the dark clouds that had gathered had started leaking rain, sending that effervescent smell into the air!

I love the rain! Almost everyone here does. Well, obviously, it is a refreshing breath of fresh, cool air that makes you feel you’re not a chicken being fried without enough oil. To some of us, rain means more than just a cool air. Rain is a real mood lifter. Nothing quite works magic upon my mood like sweet summer rain!

So, I came out of the lab when the power got cut-off, smelling the rain and hoping to get wet and forget my attendance problems. And I walked out, into what had toned down into a slight but steady drizzle. And as I walked, stepping in the puddles and enjoying the wetness, the best thought struck me. ICE CREAM!

Nothing like an ice cream when it is raining. And 15 minutes and a cup of vanilla ice cream later, I was truly HIGH on the weather! Unable to bother myself even with he fact that I just turned my back to the professor who was threatening to make me stay back in the campus for a month in the summer for compensating my lack of attendance. Nothing could quite bother me then. It was me, the beautiful dark clouds, the specks of rain and my ice cream fresh mouth.

Tough to imagine how the British think rainy and dark is gloomy. They should stop calling it that!

Bottom-line: “Gloomy” is the best romance I’ve ever had with nature!