Timi's rainy day

I woke up to the sound of the television blaring. The news anchor was screaming on top of her lungs warning everyone to stay at home as there was going to be heavy rain for the next 48 hours. She was blaming the BMC for the overnight flooding of roads. Mummy and Daddy should probably watch this news channel everyday so that the news anchor aunty could wake me up. Mummy and Daddy’s screaming does no good anymore.

As predicted, it's been raining all day long. The sky is a light grey colour with dark grey clouds. “It is the perfect day to watch a horror movie with Daddy”, I thought to myself. I went to Daddy’s room. He was sitting on his table with his laptop. He saw me from the corner of his eye and immediately snapped, “Timi not now, I have a lot of work. I will watch the movie with you at night.”

“How did you know I was going to ask you this?”

“Because I am your daddy. Now, go to your mummy and let me finish my work.”

“Ok daddy.”, I said with sadness in my voice.

I plodded out of the room and went to the kitchen to talk with Mummy. Mummy was covered in sweat despite the cold, rainy weather outside. She was making ladoos along with Sonu masi. Looking at my gloomy face, she gave me a ladoo to eat. But I did not want to eat ladoo, I wanted to help in making them.

“Mummy, can I help in making ladoos?”

“Timi not now, these ladoos are for sale.”

“What do I do then?”

“Go see what your granny is doing.”, saying this, she shooed me away.

No one wanted me. I stomped out of the kitchen to granny’s room. Granny was nicely sleeping on her rocking chair. I creeped into the room to get a closer look. She had placed her glasses on her forehead and a storybook was open on her lap. I whispered into her ears, “Dadi, can you tell me a story?”

She jolted awake and mumbled under her breath, “Timi, not now.” before sleeping again. Granny also did not want to spend time with me. Then who would?

I went to my room and closed the door behind me. I sat at the window and angrily scolded the rain, “Hey rain, because of you I can’t go to school and meet my friends. At home, no one has time for me. You are very mean.”

I think I angered the rain too much and it started pouring more heavily and loudly. Then there was a roaring thunder which made me shut my ears. I sulked and sat at the window to pass my time. The water droplets hanging from the rod outside the window looked like glass beads of the necklace that I sometimes wore with my white frock. I counted them. There were 24 water droplets in total. I wanted to know how many beads did my necklace have. I opened the drawer to fetch out my tin jewelry box which had my necklaces. One, two, three, four...twenty-four! That made me very happy and I rushed to the window again. Then, I carefully touched one of them. The cold water droplet immediately broke with my finger. Then I broke another and another and kept doing that until all were gone.

I looked down from the window and saw people walking with colourful umbrellas. I could not see the people. The big umbrellas were hiding the people under them. Black umbrella with orange polka dots. Black and white stripes umbrella. Black umbrella with red border. I think all the people under black umbrellas must be boys. In my house, only Daddy uses black umbrella. So colourless, I hate it. That’s why I had asked Daddy to buy me a yellow umbrella with big red polka dots.

As I was looking down, I suddenly heard a loud whistle. I looked up to see where the sound came from. PEEEEEEEP, I heard it again. I looked straight to find a girl standing at the window in the next building. She was looking at me and when I looked at her, she blew it again and laughed happily. I also had a whistle, I had collected the whistle sticks of the lollipops I ate. I removed one from my bag and blew it with force. My whistle produced a much thinner sound but it made her laugh! Then she blew it again, this time louder than before. I took the remaining two whistle sticks and blew all three of them together. Then she took a deep breath and blew hers continuously for fifteen seconds. I also joined her but she lasted longer than me!

Out of nowhere, loud Hindi songs started playing and she started dancing at the window. Looking at her, I also started dancing, soon we were copying each other’s steps and singing along. We kept dancing as the rain kept falling and the thunder kept roaring.

Suddenly, I heard Mummy’s voice calling me for lunch. It was time to leave my new friend. I waved bye at her and she did the same. I ran out in the hall.

“Timi, come let’s watch the movie”, said daddy excitedly.

“Where were you Timi? I wanted to tell you stories.”, exclaimed granny.

Suddenly everyone wanted to spend time with me. I think I don’t hate rain holidays anymore! I wish it rains more and more so that we get more and more holidays!

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It is so refreshing to think from a child's point of view. It was raining continuously in Mumbai yesterday and I thought why not think how a child would feel on such a gloomy, wet, rainy day! So I wrote down Timi's thoughts and I hope she could make you smile and laugh.

Vaibhavi