This theme is repeated in movies as well. Notwithstanding the cleavage-revealing and skin-transparency possibilities, filmmakers love to show the loving couple gyrating to the tune of some song in the rain. (My favorite, no matter how down market it might be for you, will always be Smita Patil and Amitabh Bachhan in Namak Halaal.)
And love hurts. Love is supposed to make you feel sad. The pain of love is what you pine for; you sacrifice, take on the woes of your lover and wait for a better afterlife.
On the other hand, in the West, love is always a beach. It is a sunny day. It is warm. And it is happy. And while you are at it, back that booty up.
Love is happy. If it doesn’t work out, there are other fish in the sea. Love is fulfillment. The clouds are gone and the sun is shining bright. There are no clouds in the sky.
When I think of a perfectly romantic day, what often comes to mind is warm rain. I cannot conjure up a very warm, sweaty day at the beach as the ideal for romance.
May be it has everything to do with my childhood. The monsoons were such great fun. When it rained hard, I will go up to the terrace of my apartment building and soak up all the water. My skin will turn pale under the pounding of the rain and my face would hurt. I would be in seventh heaven, just standing there getting wet and looking at the whole city getting drenched, from the fairly sterile building top.
And during vacations, when it rained, we would take large cooking pots (these were large enough to seat an adult and three or four kids) and use them as makeshift boats to paddle around newly formed ponds as rainwaters surged.
Things are different now. Now I feel like I have to run inside and get an umbrella whenever it rains. And the rains in the cities just highlight the dirt even more. I am sure if I went back to the places of my childhood, I would find the depressions that used to become ponds have been leveled and buildings built upon them.
Slowly, you have no place to call home, no place to go back to. The only home is what you have in your heart. Times of India became a rag of the worst kind, journalism was replaced by page three gossip, TV shows incessant idiotic dance numbers and romance comes ready-made with designer labels.
This morning, as I was driving to work, my iPOD was playing a series of rain songs. Randomly. Then, suddenly Asha Bhosle was singing with Kronos Quartet. I had gone to a concert recently in the US to listen to her sing with them. It was sad to hear her sing off-key and her age was taking a toll on her voice. But that is life.
Nothing remains the same. Not even the rain.
