windy, drenched evenings at ISB

It's just lovely when it rains here. I guess in Delhi you had to stick your nose out and upwards to find the romance of rain, amidst all the clutter of pigeon-shat balconies, hooting bikes and traffic, the squelchy sounds of slush gaining volume. That is, if your first thought was not 'ohfuck there's gonna be a 5-hr jam at Nizamuddin!' or 'damn why does it have to rain the day I do the laundry?'.

But out here, like everything else in its moderate, efficient, well-regulated disposition, even the rain falls gently, sweetly, cleanly. Which is quite sweet, really. It's the ideal way to enjoy rain, the kinds we only sighed about as we tried to get romantic, staring from our tiny heavily-grilled Delhi windows. Mostly it drizzles, for a nice, long long time, so you can get your coffee mug out and take a walk without getting bone drenched. Once in a while it does a seductive number, with filmi winds sweeping the place (and due to lack of general verticality of habitation around ISB, when winds blow they really blow, full-full and all) and raindrops turning into serious showers that come right into the room, passing through every tiny atom of me and making me feel like I've been born again. Or that what is this if not a waste, since at this very moment I'm not a chiffon-sari wearing movie heroine at the helm of a desire-drenched superhit song?

Today I decided it was a waste, an utter utter waste to stay indoors while it rained so gorgeously (although the apartment does turn rather heavenly at such times, with the numerous bay windows making it so airy you'd think you're on a cloud). So I got my fiver out, got a cuppa hot Nescafe from the vending machine downstairs, and explored some of the student village I live in. The longer I stay here, the more I tend to fall in love with the design of this building complex. It's very clean and modernist type, which also means it's rather uniform for all apartments and their blocks, but there's a really beautiful play with lines, angles, shadow and light, and garden and water spaces between concrete built structures. I can spend hours just looking at them. They give the hackneyed 'harmonious' a new life.

For one, I love the way the architect has left so much space for nature within the built structure. There are patches of green lawn outside every apartment. Flowering bushes are planted in hedges. Champa trees grow in clusters. Water lilies line the shallow pool-like spaces (of course, too tedious to keep filled and clean). Neem trees spread their ample shade over perfectly butt-comforting clusters of rocks. And of course, there are the giant rocks left stunning-ly in the middle, as if testifying to the formidable quality of nature itself.

Plus, there are only one or two levels, which means you get to see more sky. Which is also probably why I have been raving over the gorgeous sunsets at Hyderabad that just flame out in the most exquisite glow of colours, like a Raphael ceiling mural, or a Turner skyscape. (And to think that this pic was taken in a moving bus with a phone camera - can you even imagine the real thing?!)

And so I spent a lurvly lurvly perfect rainy afternoon here today. And just to prove that my theories about well-behaved rain are correct, lemme tell ya that even after 2 hours of deciding-walking-clicking-coming back-writing, it's still drizzling softly, pitter-patter-pitter-patter like it was when I decided to step out. As if it's telling me I could do it all over again!