For Agnostia :)

Hey, i've been having visitors and poor me, did not notice this at all!! :) Welcome Agnostia! - Instead of replies to those wonderful comments - thought i would dedicate some lines in this space of mine in due thanks to our time spent on my editions :)

Am a big fan of monsoons, agnostia. I can love the light drizzle to the lovely wonderful downpour.. And that night, the drive to mayajaal was lovely, as it was raining out there and the rain only got heavier as the drive went on. Have you been to the ECR road in the night? Save the oncoming headlights, that road has a wonderful soothing effect on me. Especially that night. A smoothly driving car, wipers swishing past your line of vision and Kishore -da with Boss's ( Boss kaun hein, maloom hein kya ? :) ) music playing at a soft volume inside the car. The tarmac rolling under my wheels, crushing the water droplets and squeezing them out of the way with the lovely sound.

Trees and landscape rush past me in wet blur and in silent darkness. Once you cross the civilzation belt nearer to the city, you hardly would see residential lights on your side, save those glittering blinking lights of the restaurants on the way. And if you go during late hours ( which is what we wre doing that day) even most of those are switched off.

Smoothly purring machine, your senses humbled by the lovely consistent downpour - the strangely endearing sound of the wipers on the glass as the proof of that , and your heart leaping to joy with every modulation of kishore-da. Life cannot be better. It was a lovely drive all the way to mayajaal.

But the movie was a let down. I am not a big fan of SRK. Neither am a i a complete commercial movie nor an art movie critique. I take in movies for the sake of movies and enjoy every kind of movie. But this was a little too much for me. The story is simple - a very uncomplicated love story from the folk tale collection of rural rajasthan. A ghost in love with a lovely just-wed-wife. A husband who prioritizes money in front of marital companionship. Husband leaves town in business for 5 years. And the ghost lives as the husband in the household. The husband comes back, who's the real man fight arises and the Ghost finds a way to stay back with his lover by getting into the husband's body.

Mmmm.. A very colorful movie, a sensational Rani moukherji, double SRK and the magical charismatic screen presence of the Big B himself does not make a wholesome movie entertainer. Almost a continuous track of songs and story thinner than Lays wafer, made me start fidgeting on my seat quite soon! Even the songs that keep coming your way at the drop of every pallu or every sneeze are nto remarkable, so to say, i don;t remember the tune of even one song now :( My bottomline is , it is not worth spending your time on the same. For me though, the whole trip was worth that one drive to Mayajaal though - through the rain!

Have you ever chased the monsoons, Agostia? During those younger days, me and couple of my friends dared to do that adventure. We were leading the monsoon. We we re on the bike and we we driving on the same path that the clouds were traveling. We would go to a village, and within max 24 hours of us being there, it would start raining and then we would move on again. It was an amazing experience. Sometimes, i wish we could be more footloose.

I was in Kumarakom, last year, i think, in the middle of a hot summer season. The planned ferry ride to the sea was a welcome relief. We were in the middle of the sea, when, it rained. It was a complete reversal of natural systems. Within seconds, the skies darkened and the clouds poured. Most of us, except for a team member and me, ran to the shelter of the covered place inside the boat. The whole expanse of the rocking boat's terrace and it was just two of us facing the raindops.

On the whole, that was one rain i would not forget for a long time. Water was all around us. The expanse of the wonderful sea horizontally all around us, the sea under us hungrily devouring every single drop of rain amongst its small waves and the small crests and the clouds above us showering us with chill streams of pure aqua. I looked up and instantly my face was under a barrage of tinklinf incessent drop of water. I could have stayed there for ever like that. The rocking boat was almost adding to the trance. But what made it magical was the fog. Among this rain, the mist had swirled in to cover the shore all around us. All around us, all we could see was the expansive water land and nothing else. Water is almost all ifts forms - the sea, the clouds, the mist, the rain. It was as though were encompassed in serenity and simplicity. 10 minutes of sheer absolute bliss. I wish time had stood still there ( Ironically, for me, it had - my watch had stopped working about 10 minutes back due to the rain :) )

In the middle of a rollicking sea while rain lashes the water around you.
On the sands near the beach while rain spaks the timelsss sand grains around you.
On a terrace looking at the wind blows sea waves.
On the bike, wiping the rain drops that snake you face as you ride on
On the car, wipers swishing the water off your windscreen, never really succeeding in completely doing it.
Inside the house, holding the cuppa cappuchino watching the rain swash buckle outside the window.
Walking on the road, getting drenched right down to your bones and loving every minute of the same, fighting for a cup of yoghurt with your friends
Standing, shivering, under the Nair's tea shop sipping the best cup of tea from the shop with hot "parippu vada" or samosa

Monsoons come in varied flavours! :)

It's monday morning and i hope you have an fantastic week ahead of you!

Me.

PS: I've replied to your comments too. :):)