Monday, August 27, 2007

Raincoat

My 5th semester has started. The third week is going on. And I cannot believe the incredible amount of work that has piled up! Its simply mind blowing! I mean, just 2 lectures on the immune system covers about a 100 pages in the textbook! :O I'm so royally screwed this semester :(

I have been forcing myself to study. Right now, its not working. My mind is against the whole idea and wants to do something else. So I was pondering what I'd rather do right now. Of course, a million things come to mind, but none as dear as this thought.... Long story! Brace yourself!

Yesterday I had gone for a dance concert. Amazing performance. There was an intermission during which they served samosa and sweet packed in a plastic box with a rubber band wrapped around it. Like everyone else, I removed the rubber band and put it on my wrist as a temporary bracelet. After pigging out, I completely forgot about the band and happily walked back into the theatre. Mind you, the theatre was friggin' cold! The rubber band and the cold theatre brought back loads of wonderful memories.

As I sat watching the performance, I could smell something very familiar. Just one whiff of the scent and about a million memories came rushing back. The rubber band on my hand had a smell which reminded me of raincoats!

I had a strange raincoat when I was at school. Not uncommon! Boys wear that type of a raincoat all the time! But not girls. Girls usually carry umbrellas or where flowery pattern coats. Mine was different from them not just in pattern, but also material, shape etc etc etc.

My raincoat was light brown in colour, knee length with big brown buttons. It also had a collar and a belt! If I wore the raincoat over my clothes, I'd look like the detectives (and also the shady characters) on the cheesy old classics wearing long overcoats with hats and their collars turned up so as to hide their face! If my raincoat was black, it would have looked like Neo's overcoat (from The Matrix). Thats precisely why I loved it! It gave the mysterious look to me!

It rarely rains in my home town. When it does rain, it pours. Its a big event! Nothing is the same for us school kids! Especially for us kids who used to cycle to school. I used to wear my coat, and ride in the rain, getting horribly wet below my knees. And being the oh-so-regular student, you'd never find me in any other foot wear other than school shoes. So inevitably, I sit with wet socks all day, shivering and loving every moment of it! (I'm not weird! Try living in my home town and you will realise how wonderful it is to shiver for a change!)

So now you know why the combo of a cold environment and the smell of rubber made me think of rain. And you know what I'd rather do right now? I want to wear my coat again, take my cycle out and go for a long ride in the heavy rain. I want to smell the rain, the trees and the wet raincoat's polymer smell (:P). I want to come back home, take the coat off and sit with a towel in hand, shivering in wet jeans. I want someone to serve me hot chocolate as I sit on the bean bag with a comforter wrapped around me while I watch my favourite program on TV. Once I am done with the hot chocolate, I wanna go to my bedroom, curl up on the soft bed, under the warm covers and fall asleep listening to the thunder, lightning and rain.

Looks like tonight I'll get the comfortable bed. But I'll also get sweltering heat, boring lecture notes (to put me to sleep), the sound of the fan and thoughts of another day at lab when I go to bed. *Sigh*. Not all wishes come true, eh?

3 comments:

Anusha said...

Hee! So this is what you were talking about during the performance! :P

Whenever I think about raincoats, I'm reminded of the five years I spent at Bombay when I was a kid. Bombay has a rainy season, so during those 4 months, schools used to allow children to wear "rainy shoes" (which had to be specially bought, mind you - the number of shops that sprang up in June selling "rainy shoes" was always astounding!). I used put on my squeaky rainy shoes and my raincoat over my huge horizontal school bag and trudge off to school every day. When we got to school, there'd be this nice polymer smell (:P) of raincoats all over the classroom because of the dozens of raincoats being spread out to dry. Ah, fond memories. :)

Anonymous said...

weird teenagers, talking about smelly polymers!!!

Confused Soul said...

The smell of polymers..lol!! I don't know if I've told you this before, but lots of smells remind me of Calcutta!! Whenever I would smell it, I would stop wherever I was, take a deep breath and tell mom, "Mujhe calcutta ki yaad aa rahi hai.. smell se!" .. And she has not figured to this day what exactly Calcutta smells like! :P

Cute post! :)