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. 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. 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. To my mind, the color of wet nature is similar to the color of a young woman after having the first bath in the first light of the day. Moreover, it, the wet nature, 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 pulls the rain on Earth. We pull the beauty out of the rain.
I am extremely connected to the rain like a poet connected to his poetry. I can feel the misty wind as a message ahead of it hits the ground of my land. My legs go nuts to meet the muddy fields and calm roads; my hands get impatient to touch the wet leaves. It excites me like a new line or theme of a poem excites the poets; it awakens my addiction to get out there and embrace it like an opening stanza rise and shine in poet’s mind and insanely drive him/her to give birth of it in words. It brings back past memories to think of and creates new memories to think about for my future self. I will be remembering 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 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.
