What is it about rain that makes you remember?

by Last Last Day

Pallavi Panigrahi, II Year, B.A. LL.B. (Hons).

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I am sitting by the window. It is raining and I can feel the drops of water on my face. A drop trickles down my face and falls on my hand. Memories of a time long forgotten, a childhood, not that far back yet so unreachable, flood my mind. A sudden flashback of running through the front garden and getting drenched in the rain in one of the many old British-style houses that I lived in fills my mind vividly. Then another image, of my mother shouting at me, asking me to come back.

What is it about rain that always makes you sift through all those past memories that in the humdrum of daily life become repressed in your subconscious?

Hailstones! The initial excitement of listening to the exaggerated pitter-patter on the roof as tiny lumps of ice fall on the ground. Running to the front verandah to collect the ice faster than my brother. Images after images of those days, long past. Of innocence, long gone. Of hope, long forgotten. Memories.

A song comes to my mind. The song that was playing in the background when I shared an umbrella with my first crush. I can almost feel my heart thundering, the way it had thundered for those few precious stolen moments. Anticipation tugs at my heart. And a certain melancholy. A sudden yearning to go back into those days of sweet innocence, of glorious horizons and endless possibilities, of happy dreams. Falling asleep near my mother. Playing with my brother. Not knowing the feeling of apprehension. Where future is a bright happy place.

What is it about rain that makes you remember?