A mouthful of rain

It was a lovely, rainy night and I was sitting in a cafe in Koramangala for dinner with my sister. Since we are both the sort of people who enjoy the rain very well from a distance, we sat next to the large glass window which gave us a good view of the rain tearing down, on the main road, on one side of the cafe. My sister was reading a comic and I was busy attacking the amazing banana waffle before me with a vengeance. We would both look up every now and then to look at the people and cars moving in the thick rain. After a while, the couple at the table next to us started to leave and I could hear them laughing down the stairs. As they crossed the road outside in the rain, the yellow light from the overhead street lamps fell on their figures and it had almost a movie like effect with the rain beating down. We looked out just in time to see the young woman do a little jig in the rain as the man drew closer.

It was one of those moments which are not your's but make you happy anyway.

Does anybody reading this remember the name of that short story by Ruskin Bond where a young school boy is waiting alone for a train at the station and meets an older lady who makes friends with him? She takes him to the station cafe and feeds him all sorts of goodies like samosas and jalebis while they wait for his train. A little while later the boy's friend arrives with his mother and they all start talking. The unknown lady pretends to be the boy's mother.

I feel so contented tonight that I won't even write about how blatantly sexist is Andhra Pradesh's new law prohibiting women from drinking in pubs after 10:00 pm. It's so much easier to lock up the women, isn't it? But I just said I won't write about it.

P.S. What would I not give to have a detachable scalp or even retractable hair. Every year I tell myself that the winter is the worst and then summer happens!