I have always hated getting drenched in rain. I loath the sensation of wet clothes clinging to my body not to mention the cold, cough and fever bouts common during this season.
But as I grew up, I realized rains had a positive dimension to them.
I could sit on the window ledge and watch the rain fall, I could make paper boats and set them sail in the running water, I could have hot pipping chai with onion pakodas... with a mushy-mushy nicholas sparks to read. I could afford to be lazy doing no work all day and blame it on rains. Not to mention experiencing the odd pull at my heart while listening to good old hindi songs. And this would be the icing on the cake.
I am a BIG fan of old hindi songs, especially songs that start with barsat, saawan, barish, rim jhim.... top of the list are:
Rim Jhim gire saawan, sulag sulag jaaye man, bheege aaj iss mausam main, lagi kaisi yeh agan... Who can really answer that?
Or
Rim Jhim ke geet sawan gaaye, haaye, bheegi bheegi raaton main... ke hoton pe baat dil ki aaye, haaye, bheegi bheegi raaton main
Or
Barsaat main, (tak dhina dhin), Barsaat main, hum se mile tum sajan tum se mile hum... Barsaat main (tak dhina dhin)
The lyrics of these songs are so delicately interwoven that the listener can actually see them blend into the rain. So silky and anonymous are these lyrics - one can never make out whether the song is being sung by humans or by Gods... Not to undermine the meaning associated with each word ... So intricate and unimaginable... It always exports me to a different realm all together... Such is my involvement in these songs...
Now, I have stopped cribbing about rains. I start digging into my songs collection and begin to clear the dust off them - in parallel, I also clear the cobwebs from my mind ...



