Rain, memories and more

Waking up to the rains always takes me back in time to a city I loved a lot and some wet pages from diary of life.
Monsoon mornings used to be dark, yet cheerful in Calcutta. If the rains had just begun the night before, a trudge to school through flooded roads would be in order, followed by empty classrooms, socks handing from chairs, special tiffin to be shared with special friends and a lot of free periods. If the rain had been on for a few days at a stretch, it could also mean no school, hot pakoras at home, games with the family and television.
It was the same this morning too. In distant Delhi, distant geographically from the place called home in my childhood and further still from the home I go back to today, and distant too from the person I was then to the person I am now, the morning showers bring back the same scenes. A two-room flat on a first floor house, a bigger house a few years later, with a beautiful garden outside my window....the smell of the wet earth was the same throughout and is the same today.
I reach out to pull my favourite blanket from my childhood over my face and laze a while longer when the raindrops on the window in front of me create a haze. I can smell my mom's cooking, hot coffee brewing in the kitchen, nauseating me, even as lovely hot breakfast gnaws at my hungry stomach. I open one eye to call out for my brother sleeping next to me and realise the gas stove in my kitchen hasn't been switched on in the past few weeks. And my brother is probably handling a shift at his workplace miles away. The only smell is of the trash I have forgotten to turn out for the third day in succession fighting with the fresh air struggling to coeme in through the barred window and from under the door.
I wake up, let the air in, let the morning in, let my present in, and stand watching the trees sway in the breeze. I loved that morning long ago, I love this morning too and no matter where tomorrow dawns, it shall also be mine and I shall love it too.