Rain rain go to Spain

“Aasmaan girya karta hai!! “,( Even the sky weeps in this city!!)  These were the comments of a friend I once heard as she expressed her distaste for Vancouver and its seemingly incessant drizzle.
Maybe the monotony of the drizzle and the gloom that prevails has tarnished her idea of rain .. but thousands of miles away on the other side of the coast, I still love rain, even when I feel as if the sky is crying its heart out.
It reminds me of times long gone by, with memories as crisp as the red leaves during Fall in Toronto. For instance, I remember, as if it was yesterday, how the mango trees in our back yard looked when I was about 3 or 4. I can feel the rhythm as I swung up and down on the little red swing my parents had kindly installed on the porch, as I looked out at those trees and the skies. There were a lot of ravens in those mango trees. They made a lot of rukkus after the rain, and they destroyed the fruit. We let them be, it was their territory.
Rain in Pakistan came in two flavors. The gentle and sparse rains of the winter, and the flood causing torrential rains of the monsoon. But far up in the Northwestern plains, the two often seemed to have similar characteristics; the Indus never flooded even during the Monsoon, and the winter rains were always foggy and never gentle. To top it off, my parents moved houses like no others. My rains became memoirs of every house I had lived in, the perspective dependent on the few years I had spent in that house and neighborhood. Once we moved into a ‘Muhallah’ for a short period of time; Pakistan’s version of “traditional” neighborhoods. We had a playground next to the house , well just an empty space with grass in it that the kids used as a playground. As always, it was about 10 ft deeper than the streets surrounding it, so during every rain it became a lake / swimming pool. The kids stood on the corners wishing their parents would let em jump in and have some fun – It never happened. That house also had a mulberry tree – and it always grew purple plump mulberries which were always out of the reach of a small 8 year old.  One rainstorm, it fell down and my mother asked someone to clear the mess. However, as it lay on the ground, my sister Jaweria and I, and some rowdy kids from the street had our share of mulberries, even the ones on the very top branches. That was our revenge!
Finally, my parents decided to settle down in one house and hence, the biggest share of my rain memories comes from the house we live in for past 14 years. Summer rains didn’t come alone in my home town, they brought thunder, lightening  and stormy winds with them. And they had a tendency to start at the worst of times. For instance, right about when me and Jaweria had dragged every medical instrument in the house, as well as drugs marked with “Physcian’s sample not for sale” outside to play “Hospital”, thunder would start and we would get afraid. Jaweria was happy I guess, she didn’t have to be subjected to forced check ups and syrups I forced down her throat. Among the two of us, she ended up going to medical school. I never quiet comprehended the irony.  And sometimes, the skies would get dark and the wind louder as soon as our parents were out of the house and we were alone. Each summer, a few of our eucalyptus and poplar trees went down due to thunderstorms. I never understood why our lane and house had so many to begin with, from the 5ft tall ones to the ones above 50 ft. But everything was always so beautiful after the rain. Even if the trees had fallen,  power lines damaged, we were always happy that the small water canals in the lawn were full of rain water, and our paper boats swam beautifully in them.
Have you ever noticed how the rain makes all colors brighter? Or maybe it was just true of the pomegranate blossoms, so starkly red against the dark green of the leaves. They were always beautiful. I was just sad at how many of them fell during the storm – that meant a lot less fruit, a lot less monkey business on the pomegranate trees.  It was always a bittersweet moment.
The memories continue – from north west to the east , across the border from Amritsar.  I would never forget, nor would anyone who made the mistake of coming in that day, a fine fall morning of 2002. We had just started 2nd year and were very happy to see each other after the entire summer break. Not to mention, we were ecstatic about “ragging” the new comers to the school i.e. the 11th graders.  By 8 o clock that morning, the sky was falling down in liquid form on the city of Lahore. Every single person in my class, looked like a wet rag, thanks to the 10 min run from college gate to the “science” block and our classroom. That morning saw some very interesting scenes. For instance, a class room full of women,  every 2 of them holding a dupatta between them, which they moved up and down. On close inspection, one would notice that this was to make it dry and to aerate it with the aid of the excruciatingly slow ceiling fans of the old science block. No matter how drenched we were, we were thankful the rain kept our professors at home, and we spent the entire day waltzing around the school, gossiping and eating Dahi bhale from ‘Open air’ or Chicken Roll from the “PC”.
Almost a decade later, and thousands of miles west, I still love rain. In Toronto, it seems to be evasive, as evasive as the moods of this city. You will see sunny skies, and the next moment you would be drenched. Then a rainbow will find its way across Finch Ave West, right smack in the middle of the city.  In those moments the city is beautiful, almost surreal, like the rains I remember. The only difference is, the cherry blossoms have replaced the pomegranate blossoms, and instead of paper boats and skipping, I have taken to sipping cappuccino as I look out of the window at the rain.