By Anu Dev
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
– John Updike
I must confess that I love the rain. Not to walk in the rain or anything like that… even though libraries are filled with poetry about that experience.
I just love the rain when I’m in bed. Really! Some of the most pleasurable moments of my life have been waking up when the rain’s just started to fall and then burrowing down into the sheets for a little more of that sweet slumber. This is how I imagine heaven to be.
The downside of that is the rain starts just when my mom decides to rouse me from bed for school or some such mundane reason. The iniquities of life! It’s cruel and inhuman punishment, I think.
I mean, lying in bed, sometimes in that in-between reality connecting the dream world and this harsh one here: isn’t this when you have your most creative ideas? The only problem is that we don’t remember anything when we’re roused. But we do retain that feeling of thinking “deep thoughts”.
I was very pleased to read later (in a chemistry text, of all places) that one of the greatest of discoveries in organic chemistry (which was the bane of my life in the sixth form) occurred to the scientist Kekule while he was dozing. I won’t bore you with the details save that it had to do with a snake seizing its own tail.
My parents sadly were never convinced that they were preventing me from possibly making a similar scientific breakthrough . The Nobel Prize lost! The rains have arrived over here in Trinidad… just as I am informed it has in Guyana. But I discovered I’m not having the exact reaction.
And I’m not referring to the scary fact that even though I have no one to rouse me… I roll out of bed on my own volition. Is this the beginning of “turning into your mother” that I heard about? Or is it the responsibility of adulthood? Either way, it’s disconcerting.
But what it is, is that the sound of the rain over here is different. It took me a while to figure that out. In Guyana, I’d gotten used to listening to the patter of the raindrops on our galvanised roof. Even through the wooden ceiling, it makes a very distinctive sound… one that I now know is connected to all my memories of sleeping in the rain.
We all know of Pavlov’s contentions on conditioning… and I can now attest (fervently) to its veracity. I guess if I’m over here long enough I’ll get used to it.
But thinking about the rains in Guyana also brought back some unpleasant memories: having to pass through Georgetown on the way to Queen’s and being assaulted visually and olfactorily. Ok… the sights and smells of garbage floating in the canals and on the streets, since the least bit of rain makes Georgetown flood.
I do hope somebody, somehow will fix this. I read on the Internet that the three political parties promised to get together and do this.
Maybe now that the season of goodwill is nigh upon us, we’ll witness this miracle. Even though I haven’t glimpsed any star in the East yet.