Walking through the wall of rain...

My pockets, bags and diary full of bits and pieces of notes hastily written on the back of receipts, business cards, even notes and napkins, that eventually get thrown away by mistake or sold (by didi, not understanding the so called importance of my scribbles) to a waste paper collector, put somewhere safe which is so safe I cannot get to them anymore, handed on over into the endless flow of cash exchange, or used for wiping off dust, dirt, or - and this felt amazing - rain drops.

Sudden rain fell down two days ago, starting in the morning as just a little drizzle, shy and unsure of itself, and no wonder, not having shown itself for months. The shops remained shut on my way to work, the street sellers had abandod the scene as if they knew. As the hours passed, the rain gathered its courage and by the afternoon, it was pouring down the city obnoxiously and full of confidence, washing everything and everyone, whether they wanted it or not, clean off the collections of the dusty season.

As the time of going home approached I started to wish I owned an umbrella, only to find out later from didi (yes, again) being one step ahead of me as always, that the only ones available in the Patan side of town had holes in them, like pretty much anything you wish to desire - unless of course a hole is an essential, accepted and expected charasteristic of that particular item.

The Kathmandu night was gently drawing in with the last bits of grey light slowly disappearing as I walked the last leg of the road, not having been able to observe much through the taxi windows steaming up and blurred by the falling wall of rain, wanting to expose myself to that something familiar and yet strange and new, after all feeling happy I had not that umbrella. From underneath it I may not have seen my neighbourhood invaded by an army of buckets red, and blue, and green; by pots and pans and everything that had no (unwanted) holes in them (strangely enough). A delightful scene, and to make it even more so, I heard no one cough their lugns out, nor did I have to, for once, take side steps in avoidance of having my shoes spat on.

I slowed down the pace of my steps just to enjoy the magic of the rain a little longer, and magic it was, not only to my perhaps a romantic soul but also, and more importantly, to those tens of thousands of farmers accross the country who probably sighed with unimaginable relief of knowing their families just having been saved from facing hunger in the next times to come.

I would never have expected to have been so touched by something so simple as rain, but then, it is easy to impress me these days. Today I am impressed and, well, maybe not touched as such, but close, that I have sat through a whole evening with light and connections. Electricity off half the hours there is to a day, at the most unconvenient times of course, the battery never having enough time to properly charge up, it is hard to keep up the correspondance. Thus the long blog silence.

Currently this blog  gets written on those pieces of scrap and onto the pages of a diary with cheap Indian ink that fades away by just looking at it. Apologises for the inconvenient and unsufficient dissemination of these thoughts, but then again, at the moment they evolve round these simple things many of you, dear friends and readers, will probably find awfully common anyway.