Do You Remember When It Rained?
A memory of rain across places and time
As a young child in Allahabad, rain was mostly something to worry about.
It usually began with the sky changing early in the morning—dark clouds gathering low and heavy, making the day feel uncertain before anything had actually happened. I used to go to school by rickshaw, watching the sky and trying to read it.
Because the concern was simple. If it rained, the rickshaw might not come back. If it didn’t, I might be stuck at school. And in childhood thinking, that wasn’t inconvenience—it was being left behind in a large, dark school with no food, no water, and the occasional imagined ghost moving through empty corridors.
Even before the rain came, the sky kept us busy. Clouds became animals, faces, shifting shapes that never stayed still for long. As children, we pointed, argued, corrected each other, watched them form and disappear within minutes. A daily argument with the sky.
Then the rain arrived.
In India, rain did not just fall—it changed the day. When it came heavily, people gathered under trees, bus stops, tin roofs, anywhere with cover. But what stood out was not shelter. It was waiting.
Nobody really left. Minutes stretched without noticing. And waiting became normal.
Even then, nothing really stopped. People kept looking up, reading the sky, offering predictions. Someone said it would pass. Someone disagreed. Someone else studied the clouds as if they knew better. Nobody was certain, but everyone spoke.
In that waiting, strangers became briefly familiar.
Tea and coffee appeared—small, strong cups passed around, heat cutting through the damp air. And then bhajiyas or pakoras.
Potatoes, onions, chillies in spiced gram flour, fried crisp at the edges. Nothing special otherwise. In rain, they felt necessary.
School days had their own rain stories. The “rainy day holiday” was never official—just something that spread faster than fact. You would be on your way when boys cycled back shouting, “It is a holiday!”
And the day split. Turn back and risk being wrong. Continue and risk being alone in school. The ones announcing it always looked pleased, as if they had found a shortcut in the system.
In boarding school in Pune, rain often arrived with returning students—trains, heavy trunks, tired faces—and then, almost immediately, the rain itself. Arriving soaked stays with you longer than the journey: clothes that never fully dry, socks that stay cold, a dampness that seems to settle into the place.
And yet rain was never the same everywhere.
In the UAE, it interrupts rather than disrupts. Children run into it shouting, as if something rare has arrived. Even adults pause longer than they expect to, looking up as rain briefly changes the rhythm of the day.
Of course, here too, rain can become serious. Heavy downpours once turned roads into channels and underpasses into pools, stopping movement in places that usually never stop.
And still, it feels familiar in a way that is hard to explain.
Because somewhere in it is the same moment—standing still, waiting, looking up, not quite sure when it will pass.
The same rain. The same pause. Just different places.
