Café Kontra

Chase the Rain

You wouldn’t think something like rain would have a distinct boundary, but once, when we were driving along the Service road one cloudy (but dry) day, I looked ahead and saw that part of the road was wet, and that—yes, it was raining. In a few seconds we had crossed the boundary and raindrops tinkled on the car’s roof and windshield. Comical representations of rain—you know, those little dark stormclouds hovering over the head of some dour, unlucky ‘toon—spring to mind.

When clouds move, rain follows. There was a character in Douglas Adams' So Long and Thanks for All the Fish that was followed by the rain all his life; wherever he went, any time of the day, it was raining. It turned out he was a Rain God.

In cartoons and in stories, rain chases us, because the thought is supposed to be funny, especially given the fact that we’re not supposed to like rain. A sensible person, in the English idiom, is someone who “gets in out of the rain”, thus a character’s comic annoyance when the rain follows.

Consequently, the opposite is never considered, being much too absurd. The idea of a role reversal always is fun, though; what if it was you who chased the rain instead, always following storms and clouds and the tinkling raindrops?

People chase the rain, in a way, when they burst out of their homes to dance in the rain. I’ve done that all of once in my life, and that was very, very long ago. And we catch the rain our mouths and hands, which are spread wide open in anticipation.

It rains practically every day here during rainy season, and I chased the rain only once in my life. This will be something I will regret, surely, but tomrrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will pass and the number will remain the same.

What reason is there for me to chase the rain, anyway? During the rainy season, people get runny noses and pneumonia and walk home in floods, wet and cold and utterly miserable. Why would any sane person subject herself to that?

[Perhaps to remain sane.]

Anyway, rain or not, here’s to greeting everything with our hands and mouths spread open in anticipation instead of slinking underneath overhangs and trees. Cheers!

posted by Jael @ 2:08 AM