Desert Rain

Pigeons

On my windowsill,

Its raining!

My friends in other states do not believe it rains in rajasthan. They go, "Oh, its a desert state, right? Of course you don't get any rain!"

No, we do not wake up to find our beds turned to rafts. We do not paddle on tyres to cross the road. We don't even have to wade through waist-deep water to get to office.

But we do get our share of the monsoons.

Yesterday morning i woke up to find that it had rained all night and the street in front of our house had turned into a mountain brook. And it was not as much rain as a bone drenching pour, continous, unrelenting, like being inside a waterfall. And of course the truant schoolkid in me danced a little jig "No Office dang pota dang dadang dadang dang".

It cleared up a little later, but i cocked a snook at the dry-washed morning. No way was i heading for office now that i was back in bed...

(my apologies for my friends in Mumbai/Kerala/the North-east, for getting so excited over what must seem to you a puny drizzle, but you have to admit, there is something sleepily romantic about desert rain)

Oh, by the way, I wrote the haiku up above.