The Rain

It had been raining for three days in a row and there was no sign of it to stop. Overflowing were ponds and low lands area that drew some young minds together to a competition of floating paper-made boats and watching whose boat floated longest time. The sun hadn’t smiled since Tuesday. The days got shorter since clouds dominated the Sun and kept him invisible for almost a good period of time. It was is if the kingdom of sun had been invaded and the blues of skies had been stolen. At least it was pretty clear that the mind of skies was so heavy that continuously three days pouring wasn’t even enough to make it little lighter. It was the fifth day of Rainy season.

The Faculty of Business Studies of Dhaka University arranged a program to welcome the first rain of the season in 2008. There is a funny story about the ”first rain.”  Even though it rains for several times prior to the month of rainy season, we still call it the first rain of the year. It  is very important and emotional to the rain lovers because a good half of our poetry is created around the beauty of rain. Young adults dress up to the color of rain and of wet nature. I can’t explain exactly what color that is but I can tell it has a very unique smell and purity that blows minds and purifies souls.

The Institute of Fine Arts is the closest neighbors of the business faculty. Usually, Fine Arts department does it, celebrating Barsha¹, better for it has more natural environment. The trees, ponds, birds, dirt roads in it will make anyone feel as if they were in the woods. Moreover, one of the ponds is Timpani shaped and has untrimmed grass in it. You can sit on the edge of it with your legs hanging  and feel gravitated to the center of it, and if you sit there long enough alone at night with no lights on you will feel as if all energy were drained out of your body that you were then too weak to stand up. Sometimes it makes me believe the cause of the rain in DU² is the gravitational force of that pond. It forces the rain to pour.

I am extremely connected to the rain like a poet connected to his poetry. It brings back my past memories to think of  and creates new memories to think about for my future self. I will be memorizing the events being produced now at a later time of my life as a memory that will have set the ground for the new one to emerge. One memory connects another and helps create a new one.  In my childhood during heavy rain we, I along with my siblings, were sometimes allowed to go out our front yard for racking mangoes. This memory of racking mangoes in my childhood planted a seed in memory that at the span of time turns out to be a growing and stronger element which provokes me to create some new similar memories in my adulthood. The happiness associated with the rain allures me to walking under the rain after all these years. Still I smelled the same wet rain, inhaled the same wet wind in the most beautiful campus of my dearest Dhaka University, and as I walked by Modhur Canteen³ toward my hall I heard a round table chatting about the recent step down of Fidel Castro after 49 years in power. I realized then why it was raining in mid February. Farewell Fidel.