More than often, the images of children enjoying rains have been primarily associated with rural setups; the city scenes are left casually unattended. No matter how miniscule in comparison, even the cities do offer their kids with a set of charms during the monsoons.
Back during school days, Loyola’s boundaries seemed to house a world that contrasted tremendously with its surroundings. While on the outside lay barren lands heaped with solid wastes of the city fed upon by mongrels and pigs, on the inside were layers of greenery ornamenting spotlessly clean structures, about which rabbits hopped! While the outside was notorious for criminal stories, the inside provided the comfort of a second home! In a place like that, the Loyola School with its tall boundaries, neat and huge buildings and youthful trees, stood almost like a heaven! More so, in the monsoons!
While the rains made the slurry from the dump yard run along the roads making them dirty, the school’s enclosures gained a rejuvenated look. While the roads with their broken sharp edges became dangerous for movement, the school’s pathways tempted for romantic walks. While the monsoons made outside life dull, life moved about with an altogether different fervour at Loyola!
As the greyish-white building camouflaged with the greyish-white clouds above, the world seemed to have got confined to Loyola alone! As the sun painted a rainbow on the sky after a shower, the sink in the Chemistry Lab did one for us after a wash. As Tagore’s Postmaster sat watching the retreating clouds and trying to feel the voice of the birds and leaves as the same as that of his heart, a backbencher sat and dreamt of love. As Oliver waited desperately for his hot gruel, someone prayed for the Break to relish the delicious samosas that shrieked in the canteen’s hot pan. As Caesar got stabbed from behind, a truant got pulled from the back by PT Sir for getting wet in the rains. While the baby frogs played upon the soft grass, the frog in the formalin filled glass jar in the Bio Lab seemed to be begging to be let out. While the pendulum swung in the Physics Lab, mood too swung between studies and songs. All the types of landscapes from the Geography book seemed to be present within the school boundaries. While Ashoka made the river red with war blood, someone’s blood boiled with poetic passion. The English teacher’s voice went about like some music with the rain adding beats. And as the Mathematical derivations went on and on, ‘future’ seemed something too far off to be worried about!
However, college life with its suddenly-infused ambitions and whirlpool of activities saw the rains as one of the biggest barriers even in the smallest of endeavours! And nowadays, at the university, when we see several umbrellas left out to dry after the rains and we drag them along for a pleasure photo-shoot, school days smile back.
(The writer is a PhD Scholar, Department of A & A Economics, Utkal University, and an alumna, Loyola School Bhubaneswar)