A cliche rainy day

The workstation she set up at home for the covid times of the year 2020 was against the window of her tiny room. She could see the neem tree outside, hear the stories Mynas had to tell and the once in a while appearances of squirrels felt like a bribe offered just to make her sit longer in her chair. They all needed an observer for the show they put up, it seemed like.

It didn’t rain much there but when it did, she could hear it falling on the tin shed of the garage right outside the window. She was convinced rain sounded better when it fell on metal roofs, making itself heard.

It was a Wednesday and raining too. More the reasons to avoid those pending JIRA tickets eyeing at her through the screen. She shut the laptop and made some coffee. The fancy dalgona one that was doing rounds on Instagram. She honestly felt that coffee would make things even better. What else does one need to enjoy right ? Everything was fine tuned to the occasion. Her fairy lights were on, the coffee was strong, her Youtube playlist finding a seat somewhere in the background. Even the squirrel decided to elaborately show her how she only ate half of all the fruits she picked from the ground. But something was missing. 

Took her a time travel in her head to conclude it was innocence. Sipping the coffee, watching the squirrel being a complete actress, she went back to one of her childhood memories and resumed it from there. 

It was in Paharganj, right at the heart of Delhi. The year not clear to her and she didn’t wanna do the math either, but she remembered it was when she was in class 1 or 2.She used to pretend to be asleep next to her mother and when she would be sure enough that her mother was now in her afternoon nap heaven, she used to slide away like a thief. On usual afternoons she would go to the kitchen and find where her mother hid the biscuits again. It was always a victory. Maybe her mother deliberately hid them at easy places. Later she would tie a saree out of her mother’s dupatta and put on a bindi with her sketchpens.She would climb up the chair of the dining table and look in the mirror that was otherwise too high for her. She grinned at herself and danced on whatever new bollywood song she was into those days, watching each of her moves reflecting back at her. But in this particular memory that was resurrecting in her mind, hoping to steal it away from the past, it was raining. Instead of looking for biscuits she decided to look for the only umbrella she had at her home. She had a verandah outside her home with two wires parallely hung which was used for drying clothes. She stuck her umbrella between the wires and dragged the chair outside under the umbrella. She was so proud to have built her own porch. Just by herself, for herself. She then rushed back in to do one final thing, to make coffee. The idea that one was supposed to be drinking coffee on a rainy day somehow came natural to her even then. So she warmed some milk and added tea leaves and sugar to it. This was what she thought was coffee. Milk with tea leaves added just to make it look like the coffee she saw in television ads. She carefully poured it into a steel glass and went back outside. She seated herself on the chair right in between the veranda sipping her coffee, smiling eyes wide, not knowing it wasn’t coffee.

Her dalgona was over and as she shrugged herself out of the memory, she felt that poop coming. She took a picture of her window in a hurry and ran to the washroom. Sitting on the toilet seat she posted a story with some pretentious caption on how it was raining that day. Two likes in five minutes. Huh.