June, 16th.
Clear sky, hot summer, vacation time. I was working on a team project at my friend’s home. It wasn’ unusual for me this vacation to be busy, working. In the past 1 month I was busy (read enjoying) with my sister’s wedding. Today, I was busy on a project. Just as we were getting started with the project, my friend gets a call. It was regarding our semester 4 results. Yeah, you can check the date again, its June 16 I’m talking about!
So we packed the project work and ran straight for a cab to Nirma. After all it was the “suspense of the month” moment. All those core subjects studied this semester, but my mind was on the one subject that we had all studied since we were born. A subject, the last version of which was taught to us this sem. Yes. Mathematics. Maybe I was more than curious to know how my last Mathematics exam would result.
AC cab, college visit after a month, what else do you need to forget the heat outside the cab huh? It felt like August. Cool, kind of rainy… or maybe it was just my imagination.
Rain, now that’s something everyone enjoys as long as you don’t get soaked in water on your way home. Me, I like the nostalgia factor in rains. Brings out the good memories. In my life, there is another person who is even more bonded to rains, my sister. Born in August, always brings rains as I have heard.
A month ago, when we arrived the city where her wedding ceremonies were performed, she even brought rain there. The year’s first heavy rain and a kind-of-storm. It was a very pleasant atmosphere in the next days. For the first time in my life, I didn’t sleep one full night, just to watch the grand wedding of my sister. That was when I realized how important it is for someone to have a sister. To experience being a brother. As I watched her step into a new life, it was no less than a picture perfect moment and I don’t need a video recording or photograph to remember the exact moment again ever.
When we reached college that day, the results made us wait a little longer. We had arrived early.
I was talking about Mathematics. It was one subject I was good at. I was worse at. I liked it and I hated it. Once I got 100/100 in my 11th standard. And once I got I guess 6/30 in my class test the same year. I never understood what role would sin or cos play in my life as an electronics engineer till I studied subjects like “signals & systems” and “communication systems”. After which I was even unsure than ever.
But I liked the essence of Mathematics. To me it was like music sometimes you like the song, so you hear it again and again and sometimes you just skip a song you dislike but you never delete the song from your laptop ever, do you?
The results were being placed on the notice boards and guess what, I felt like I was prepared to delete a song I had heard a lot of times. Not because I hated the song but because I might like the song once again, if I rather hear it again after a long time when it rains probably!
Ahmedabad, it rains for the first time when you stop hearing news of floods in other states of India. I had just heard stories of storms in Surat, when a couple weeks later, while we were working on the same project at my same friend’s home, Ahmedabad finally burst out. I mean the clouds did for about 5 hours straight. For about 3 hours we kept working on the project and then we got bored and called it a day. I couldn’t leave because of the heavy rains so I stayed for an hour. I didn’t say more than 10 sentences but I didn’t realize how quickly that 1 hour went. Finally after an hour when the rains were lighter, I left with an open umbrella which didn’t support me 10 minutes later when the heavy rains returned… An hour later I returned home all soaked up, 2 kgs heavier with water a good time for me to weigh myself I guess.
No, it wasn’t a bad day. I enjoyed it.
Sisters.
By the next time I met my sister, she had grown up all of a sudden. That’s what responsibility does. She did become my elder sister that moment, if not 20 years earlier. And it would rain again, probably whole July, August, this whole semester, and you’ll soon hear news of waterlogging and floods in Ahmedabad I am sure. But you will enjoy the rains and that too I am sure
Did I forget something? The result, oh. I got an A+ in Mathematics. But that doesn’t end it all.. Because I think I’ll hear the song again.