Nishant woke up with the alarm quite reluctantly. It was cold and he didn't feel like getting out of the bed, after rolling on the bed for a while and postponing waking up for ten minutes first, five minutes later he finally realized he couldn't afford to sleep any more if he had to go to work. As he decided to get out of the bed he opened his window only to see that it was raining heavily. He could see people hurrying on the road with their umbrellas, men with their trousers pulled up women with theirs sarees held up jumping over the puddles, vehicles running helter skelter and spilling muddy water on the pedestrians. He looked at the sky to see white clouds allover. All he could hear was the sound of not so gently falling rain droplets. As the wind scattered the rain, one stroke of water droplets also hit him. He closed the window and went back to sleep.
Aditi came back home running, all drenched in the rain. Her uniform was stained with mud , socks were all dirty reminiscent of mud puddles she had jumped into to spill some water on her friends. "No School maa. Teacher said the building might fall because of the rain", she announced happily.
Lakshmi, Deepti, Ravi ran around from one corner of the colony to the other making hell lot of noise. While Deepti was the engine, Lakshmi and Ravi followed her.
One after the other droplets fell, the mattress was getting wet. She moved the cot to the other side. As the intensity of the rain increased the leakage also increased, she had to do something otherwise the entire hut would get wet. She tried to close the hole with a plastic cover. As she tried to close it, one side of her body got wet. She filled the hole with a plastic cover. As she fixed it and sat on the cot tired, a droplet of water fell on her shoulder.
Anish had plan to go home early and watch the tennis match. He was almost about to leave work and the rain started suddenly. He waited for a while hoping it would subside but it didn't. He thought it would be better to get home rather than wait for the rain to stop, and he didn't want to miss the match. As he drove he realized how big a mistake it was, all the roads were blocked, water clogging on some roads, open drains on the other, he thought he'd be stuck on the road forever. He switched on the radio and listened to the commentary of the match.
He shivered as the rain poured, he sat under the tree hoping it would atleast cover some part of his body. He had wrapped a plastic cover around his head to protect from the rain. He wished the rain had stopped. It was going to be a tough season to sail through if he didn't succeed in finding some roof to sleep under.
After failure of two consecutive years, this was his last hope. If there would be no rain this year, Raju would have no option but to sell off his land which was already pawned to the bank. He had no hope left, he planted the seeds more out of habit than the hope for the crop, he had made up his mind that his life would change forever and he would have to now work in someone else's field as a labourer. As she waited for the season to get over so that he could sell his plot, this time finally it rained.
With a cup of coffee in her hand, cuddled in the sofa, looking at the droplets of water cleaning up the leaves and making them fresh and green, Akanksha began to write.