RainMan

My red side-bag didn't have an umbrella. To tell you the truth, even my red side-bag shouldn't have been there. It doesn't at all go with my pinstriped trousers and my formal shirt; even no more with the corporate sewage that I carry home, as my extra baggage, everyday. Looks more like a weathered artifact stolen away from its more carefree times.

So I went into the rain. Thinking, semi-consciously, what might be the consequences if I cannot make it to office due to a violent bout of sneezing, and a sore throat. It was a gentle rainy breeze now, with the occasional flashes of lightening, like Someone up there with a 80-200 tele lens, trying to capture the throngs of scampering people, in a single frame. Luckily, got hold of a cab(Omni), moments after I stepped out of the IT park(its also called a park, nomenclaturally equivalent to the one where little happy children gleefully chuckle when they smudge ice-cream on each others' faces). Plugged on the hands-free, and stuffed the ear-phones to shut out the world(Using the hands-free and incessantly listening to the radio while transit, is one rampant disease that WHO will fail to eradicate from the IT brethren). Windows were shut, probably since the girl opposite to me, blissfully crooning loudly whatever was being played on her radio station, feared the wind would mess up her hair, or spoil her mascara, or something.

I whacked the window-seat as a fellow passenger stepped out at Ruby. That's when I finally managed to slide open a window, carefully watching if no one gets irritated by my sacrilegious act. The first spray of the brewing Kaalboisaakhi fogged my Crizals with microscopic droplets of rain, through which the bright headlamps and street lights blurred out; and I looked to see a Wong Kar Wai-ish motion blur of colours, in the otherwise garish, familiar parts of the City.


...

Carefully maneuvering the Alur chop in the murir thonga in one hand, I lighted a GF(regular) and headed for home. The roads were still blurry with my rain-smeared compound vision, and the man-holes, opened up just before the elections, made it no easier to walk. The ciggy cinder was also having a tough time fighting the big droplets with full momentum, as it tried to douse the flame. Yet, it felt good. Like a surprise break from my regular, complacent sinusoidal world of Office-home-sleep-office. As I reached home, I could hear it. The storm brewing, both in and out. It took me a few moments to comprehend which would be more dangerous to bear. A fateful droplet won at last; as it extinguished the last attempts of the flame to burn it all. Spitting it out, I stepped in.