When it pours in Madras

I was in India last December (2005) when Chennai was receiving its share of unusually heavy rainfall. The week I landed the sky was dark grey all day long. The Adayar river (I don’t like using the word cooum) was flowing to its brim and overflowing into the open grounds along side. It would start pouring before you could finish crying out "its raining". I am a rain lover and just get excited and start jumping around when it rains. My mom and I would run outside the house to grab the clothes drying out in the open. Once the rain stopped we would go out and hang the clothes again until the next time it poured. I would be the first to jump out of my chair and run out in the rain to remove the "clips" and get the clothes from the "kodi". It reminded me of my childhood in trichy and made me feel like a kid again. Well, I always feel like a kid when I visit my parents. As my parents say, I will always be their kid. Back in trichy I remember my grandmother tying a clothesline inside the house and hanging all the clothes(when it rained). When I got back from school I would be bathed In the smell of wet clothes.

Back to madras, December 2005 for a bumpy ride. The rains made the side streets and even the main "tar" roads worse. Some sections of the road were eroded by the rain water making the road look like a birds eye view of mountains and valleys. Hey look at it this way, we don’t need to go up the mountains to do mountain biking its right at our door steps. Every time my dads car went over a bump, the bump would hit on the base of the car. So we would elevate ourselves a few inches from the seat when we knew we were going over a bump. Surprisingly, couple of days after the rains stopped we had the municipality folks come down to lay down a new road!!

Every time it started raining I would run out to smell the "Mann Vasanai". I just love the smell that arises from the soil when the first few drops of rain fall on it. Its called "Mann Vasana" literally translated to "Smell of Soil". I wish I could capture it in a bottle and take it with me every where I go. I think it is special to the soil in India. The few rare occasions it rains in Southern california I run out to see if I can smell the "Mann Vasanai" only to come back disappointed.

The rains left the city looking clean with all the smog settled down, Created a lot of small pools for the kids to play in, made the hot afternoon tiffen of frothy filter coffee & dry bakoda with crisp onion and curry leaves very inviting, washed away the rice flour patterns(kolam) in the doorways and made be yearn to come back to madras. I hope I would, someday..