THE CITY OF COINCIDENCE.

 

How weirdly satisfying are the first rains in this city. If you didn’t notice then let me bring it to your attention that the earlier sentence was not a question. I’ve always been very fond of rains and what it does to the environment. I wish there was something similar that could have the same effects and result on us human beings. It hasn’t been the kind of story where you wished for something and life and fate put their magic to manifest that and make it happen miraculously. But when things reach a threshold, there’s always something new waiting to sprout to life.

 It was just like any other day that I could reckon. It was supposed to be an emotional rollercoaster but of-course not for me. I had just gotten out of the college gate and was waiting for the only friend I had throughout the course of time I had been a student of the college and let’s not get into how much of a task that was. Oh, and yes, it was the last day for us as a student of that institute. It has always been a wonder as to how things that are nowhere near perfect or appropriate enough to become memorabilia manage to stick around and obviously when they are least expected to. Well, at that point of time I was more worried about the fact that it’s going to be extremely difficult to get a seat on my journey back home which was almost a 2-hour journey and another reason for my extremely low attendance. Speaking of which, for someone who was practically seen in college as less as the chances of not seeing a couple sitting on the Marine Drive, I was known to everyone and I wish I could say the same about them. I used to back out of events or meet-ups purposely by failing to do tasks assigned to me or as I like to call it, strategic incompetence. Extremely bad at socializing as you might have figured out by now. That particular day, I was not exactly trying to avoid anyone as I usually would.

We walked till the place where all the students and groups would hang out. I bought cigarettes for me and my friend. Who doesn’t need a smoke after 5 long years of waiting for the course to end, right? So, while we stood there amongst many others breathing out what was supposed to be our half a decade long frustration and discussing about the exams, we had just gotten ourselves through, I began gazing at the skies. Yes, it’s rude to space out in between a discussion YOU’RE CONTRIBUTING TO. The only contribution to this discussion I had were already being used as reactions to memes on social media. The sky had all of a sudden gotten this hue which was so beautifully scary that you would want to kill yourself if that was the only way to be able to see it. I took a drag from the cigarette to see if I was still breathing or not and coughed out a good amount of smoke. It reminded me of the smoke inside Neville Longbottom’s Remembrall in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as I looked at the sky through the smoke. Why is it that whenever something eccentrically beautiful is being witnessed we term it to be magic? Is it maybe because we fail to comprehend the fact of it happening all in front of us and making us realize how insignificant we are? Talking about insignificant things to worry about, I had missed my train which I had planned to catch after calculating the expected journey time, comfort and availability of space to breath so that I could reach home before the kick off time of Barcelona vs Real Madrid but I was too busy staring at the skies wondering if I’m the only one watching it.

I turned around to tell people about the phenomenal scene but to my surprise there were lesser people around now than the time we got there. I felt like I was imagining things so I checked to see if it actually was tobacco in the cigarette that I had just smoked but there was nothing wrong with it and people really had left to hang out with each other. Apparently, people had been shouting around for a long time how it was the last day and they might not even meet each other after today. Oh, come to think of it, I remember faint sounds of people saying something like that. The only people left there were me, my friend and the most amazing group of the batch. There was this group of girls, some of the most amazing people in the whole college. No one in the whole campus could have managed to hate them even if they tried their best. What surprised me the most was how they stuck together right from the time we joined the college. Always hung out together, were inseparable, the kind of friends where you cannot help but mention their names together. I put out my cigarette to have a good look at the scene that I still have stuck in my head. I turned around again but was interrupted by one of the girls from the group. I don’t exactly remember what we talked about that day. I remember telling her about how beautiful and deadly the sky looks when I noticed it had turned rather darker than earlier and the gushing sounds of wind against the leaves were now even louder than the construction work going on nearby. It was not very late in the evening but it almost felt like the sun had already set. The sound of flocking of birds went rhythmically excellent along with the sound of the wind. The wind had brought the dark clouds along with it. We had been hearing a lot about the monsoons and the first rains to be happening very soon for the past whole week. It was at that moment I realised what coincidences actually are. They are nothing but moments falling into place like the completion of a jigsaw which we never intended to complete. And oh! What a beautiful moment it was.

It has always been like this for me. Not a single day has gone by when I don’t remember how good was the first rains of last season. I figured this was going to be another of those momentous days. Rains have always been the goodwill messengers. Things all of a sudden started to seem so likeable. What made me stop here today? What was it that was more important than missing the train I had been calculating to catch even before I left my home? Why was I able to talk to people I have consciously avoided for so long? Many such questions sprung in my head while I still had my head up looking around the sky, the clouds, feeling the wind and the drops on my face. More than all of that I was looking at how beautiful this city gets when it rains. It welcomes rain like someone who has been waiting for the love of their life that they had lost and knew they would come back knocking at the door. This city embraces rains like it intends to show how much it regrets letting them go the last time they met. How it prepares itself just moments before the rains arrive at their doorstep like it’s trying to express the sheer relief and excitement of having them return.

 

Wondering about all these things made me hungry. I went to the eatery on the platform and bought something to eat just to find myself at the train station. I mean, how? It was just moments ago I was standing near my college. Never mind. I had more important things to worry about like what music am I gonna listen to after I board the train or how is it that I talked to a girl I hadn’t talked to during the whole time we were in the same college and felt so connected to her. Mumbai, the memorabilia that’s nowhere near perfect or appropriate enough but always makes you fall in love over and over again. I heard the announcement about the train, put my earphones on, boarded the train as soon as it arrived, got a seat (in peak hours Mumbai Local), turned the volume up and sat there wondering about all the things I had been wondering about for the past few hours while the sky suddenly caught my eye again. It was exactly the same like it was when it all started that day. Call it a coincidence? I think not.