Oh Great! It’s rainy season again. Clear blue skies have mustered up all the moisture and the big black clouds do look amazingly violent. Maybe there is something about violence which I find fascinating. They look like they would wash away anyone who contravened. Me and my buddy sitting on his terrace smoking a spliff, wonder at how the clouds are formed. In our haze we take forever to recollect our school lessons where we had learnt about this entire process in science class. My friend goes on in his monotone explaining how when the temperature cools down and precipitates the water vapor in the atmosphere and forms water droplets in the cloud. When these droplets accumulate and get heavy, they fall down on earth as rain. In my mind.. I wonder when I will stop listening to his horrible monotone. I need to concentrate on the clouds. As my friend continues his explanation, my imagination does an overdrive into the clouds and I feel like a water droplet idly chatting with other droplets.

While gazing intently at the clouds I see a single drop of rain, fall through the sky and land on my forehead. And within a second, drops as huge as cats and dogs start pouring on me (no wonder the term raining cats and dogs!) I scream out a sharp curse of resentment much to my friend’s bewilderment. He looks confused and I try to explain to him how much I hate rains but then I stop, because I know it would not matter to him. So I just tell him that I hate rains. He thinks it’s preposterous that anyone could hate rains. Looking at me accusingly, he tells me that clearly I had no idea what it means to make passionate love during rains, sing songs for your loved one, and miss someone special. Clearly I had no sense of romance or no sense at all. That emotional moron has a girlfriend, not everyone does.

The thought of making love in the rain puts an unnatural twist to my otherwise plain facial features. An image suddenly flashes across my memory and I visibly contort with disgust. I bark at him to spare me from any non-relevant details which he might start ranting about. I tell him that I’m terribly upset that the rains have ruined my plans of drinking with my friends. It’s at times like these that I miss owning a car rather than a royal Enfield. Oh! How I hated being wet and the fucking rain.

We both climb down from the terrace using an attached ladder and get into his room. I shake off the few drops of water that managed to touch my body and slump down on his sofa. My friend was eyeing me from the corner of his eyes wondering whats with the unnatural expression on my face. I avoid his stare and tell him it’s time for me to leave and pick my jacket and start to the door. He advises me to stay back until the rains stop but I continue heading my way out. I run out, the rains lashing at me. I feel something stirring in me. Oblivious to this stirring, I try to cross the road and suddenly see a car speeding toward me. And the next second I find myself frozen, blinded by the lights and panic.

That moment, the flashback hits me with a force and I could see it lucidly, in slow motion…Rains lashing out that ill-fated night, Mowgli and Me out on the main road and vehicles speeding away. Having spotted a car at the far end, I tug at Mowgli’s leash to pull her close to me. He suddenly snaps at me and digs his teeth deep into my thigh. With a shriek, I close my eyes shut in pain and let him go. And when I open my eyes, I hear a loud yelp and find Mowgli in a pool of blood and pasted guts, lying on the road with the receding car shedding light on my face.

I snap out of my flashback as a man violently jerks me to my senses. He had luckily stepped onto his breaks in the nick of time. With one quick look at him, I scamper away into the darkness while he stood there yelling expletives after me.