An Unremarkable Day

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It was a remarkable day.

The sun wasn't up because it was raining. Here, I should tell you about the rain. How it fell.

In sheets, some people would say. In curtains, some others would say. Like cats and dogs, still others (the ones who understand similes) will say.

If you were in love, you would think the rain is the stuff of romance. If you were out of love, you would think the skies were crying for you (this, the depressed Literature graduate who understands transferred epithets, will say).

If you were in a film, this would be your intro-song. The one in which your wet hair swings in the air to demonstrate your bubbly character. And somewhere, in a tea shop maybe, a well-scrubbed boy is watching you with fascination. And his heart balloons. It tap dances. It blinks and breaks and in the rain, in the greyness of the clouds, he falls in love with your smile.

It will be the song that the people in love think about when they see the rain. Have I told you enough? You must know now, how the rain fell.

There was breakfast in a box. Lunch, too, was there in a box. How pleasant are these things. You wouldn't, for instance, be the person who doesn't have two square meals a day. You do not have to make both the ends meet. There is money, enough of it. If you must feel sad (despite the rain, despite its glory, despite how it fell, like cats and dogs) you must invent other problems. Not the square meals one. For there they lie on the table, two boxes. One for breakfast, one for lunch.

The van was there. A little slushy, a little wet, a little more battered. But its solid form stood outside my gate. A big, green vehicle. Here it had come, to take me to office. And I didn't even have to roll on the ground and throw a tantrum. Not for me the puddles of mud. It had come, without complaint, and all that there was to do was to get in and surrender to the rexine seats. It had come despite the rain, and as I sat in the unending traffic (this is another thing that happens in the rain), I saw so many different umbrellas (more various than flowers, more beautiful than clothes).

And at work that day, as the rain fell in sheets and in curtains, and like cats and dogs, we sat before our computers, listening to it falling...falling. We liked to think of the tragedies that could befall us. Electrocution. Drowning on the road. Or a cold. But nothing fantastic happened, of course. We were not the girl in the film whose wet hair had turned a boy's heart flippety-flop. We were ordinary people and the only fantastic thing that happened to us was that the power went off. Darkness fell, not like the rain. But it was enough. We were ordinary people and ordinary tragedies were enough for us.

In the evening, when I stood on the platform waiting to go home, the trains greeted each other and the noise sounded like the mating call of monsters. I made that up inside my head, of course. I am a Literature graduate and I must make up things now and then if I am not to lose my aura.

At home, there was dinner. Magic. Not only did I have two square meals a day, I had three. When I went to bed, the rain was still falling. In sheets, in curtains, like cats and dogs. I felt like a movie star and so I slept with my hair loose.