Why I miss the rain....

Summer 2012 was strange because it almost forgot to visit my city, Madurai. We almost didn't experience summer because dark thick stacks of clouds covered the blue of the sky and it rained and poured on, till the second week of May. It still leaves me dissatisfied and I miss the rain because of all this.
a. There's water water everywhere, everything getting a great wash.
b. The temperature is pleasantly low before, during and after the rain.
c. The spectacular audio-visual enhancements such as the lightning, thunder, the various water sounds such as pitter patter, splash, swoosh, pounding, drumming, and dripping. I miss that.
d. The trees and plants are no longer covered in dust and sprout bunches of leaves.
e. The smell that fills the air when it starts to rain.
f. Walking in the rain and racing someone.
g. Riding a bike in the rain through the busy city roads, with your eyes crinkled and getting drenched to the bone. If you screamed or sang aloud no one would hear. Awesome.
h. Rain brings memories of college, which always opened in the rainy season. Transports me to my youth instantly.
We also feel re assured that this year we will enjoy good water supply and that farmers wont complain.

Praise the Rain!
 

Some one read my blog and mailed me saying that it was funny. This was not the comment I had expected to get about my random insights.

So I re-read my posts to see if I had written anything funny. My posts are a chaotic mess.I guess i don't like being predictable. So in order to write about unexpected things, I take the risk of writing in a disorganized way. There are a few funny lines here and there. But the blog is funny only to the extent life is, or only to the extent we stop to laugh at it, in middle of our other obsessions and observations. I hope this commentator had really read the blog. 

It’s kind of a funny story

The above given title is not my comment on the film. It’s the title of the film. Attractive title. Kinda funny seems interesting as well as funny. This would not be the case if the title had just been It’s a funny story or a very funny story.

The first scene is from the dream a boy has recurrently. He is going to commit suicide. His parents try to stop him. He jumps off and falls and wakes up. But this time he falls into water. The visual effect/ graphics in this scene made an impression on me.

Receptionist: WHAT DO YOU WANT

boy : i want to kill myself

receptionist: ok fill this form

It’s an ironic remark on how psychiatric treatment, which was taboo in certain times and places, which is scarecely available and is considered a mysterious mumbo jumbo in some others, is considered as being matter of fact and common these days, in some places. The boy displays intelligence of the highest order. He is intuitive when speaking to other inmates, changes track three moves before things go wrong . Very mature. The highly activated imagination, an inevitable aspect of an insane mind is portrayed in this film. For instance, the boy draws a city in the drawing class and each student interprets it in a different way. Then, he is transported into a hi-tech auditorium in his mind, when he sings in the music class. All the inmates appear in flashy heavy metal make up and costumes

There’s one punch line too…the moral of the story- “If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.” Personally, I know a third kind too…those who are busy going in circles.

I love noisy roads in cities. I dislike the quiet of the villages. Technically speaking, the badly maintained sidewalk is a symbol of lacklustre city life. It's polluted by dust, carbon dioxide, monoxide, the hooting of horns, the whizzing sound made by a variety of vehicles  and a million other by products of the frenetic traffic. But it's exactly here that my heart swells in joy and i feel totally at home. But in one way villages score over cities. There are many playgrounds for kids here. A teenager from a village told me that his village panchayat leader has purchased sports equipment such as nets and volleyballs and get to play these games every evening. Many young men from villages also speak longingly of the natural pools of water, or large wells, in which they would swim regularly. Sigh!!!! How many children today get to enjoy these things? Some builders however, make it a point to construct a swimming pool in their apartment enclaves as a value addition to tempt buyers. Let's hope this trend catches on.