I read Waiting for Rain (Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s translated into English) in the summer of 2005. It was the first book that I read while travelling in municipal buses and autorickshaws, while standing in a queue for railways tickets and every possible place where I could collect some uninterrupted reading time. Reading the book was like watching a sepia-tinted movie. I could see Soumitra Chatterjee and Aparna Sen in the Calcutta of 1960s-70s as the words spilled out. Reading the book was an experience like never before and – now that it’s part of the past – since.

It is also the only book that I ever bought a second copy of, thanks to a colleague who never returned it. I haven’t re-read the book, but seeing it on my shelf I relive the experience all over again.

Looking back, I also believe that reading Waiting for Rain was so intensely gripping for a few reasons apart from the book itself. The fact that I was waiting for it to rain as well – the dry, parched, hot summer had seemed to stretch itself over unending, unbearable weeks – was one factor. The other was seeing Soumitra-Aparna as I read. No, the book was not made into a film, least of all with this lead pair. But they seemed to fit in so darned perfectly that they were all I could see.

Moving back a bit in time… One of the songs that B loved was Dil ke armaan aansuyon mein beh gaye. He had said that he remembered the song not so much for itself, but because he had heard it once while sitting in an empty train outside an obscure station in Bihar. It was nighttime, the train was empty and the song – soft and faraway – had wafted in from nowhere. It had reflected a lot of what was on his mind, he had said. Hence the fondness.

A lot of what we hold close to ourselves, it seems, is not because of those things alone, but the circumstances under which we experience them.

And why am I writing about this? The monsoon hit the southern coast of Kerala today.

I have been wondering for a while what next to write here. Nothing really earth-shattering happens... except the sleep-rattling thud on my door every morning, hurled by the woman who comes to collect the garbage.
And then a long chat happened with a friend far away. Whirlwind wedding plans, nagging, irritating would-be in-laws, expenses to be met, a thesis to be completed... yet another friend, yet another thesis, another set of getting-on-your-nerves in-laws...
My life is so predictably unexciting that sometimes it's almost embarrassing!