Ramdhenu

This afternoon it rained here. The season's first big shower giving relief from a month long scorching heat, hot wind and dull surroundings. Suddenly every movable and immovable, living and non living came to life. As I walked down the road to get a new DVD from bigflix store, the beautiful change mesmerized me. Every house seems to be newly coloured as it draws my attention which it fails to do every time I pass them. The trees are washed from the mask of dust to be green again. I noticed everything that came my way - the election campaign posters, the billboards, the park railings etc etc. The road is swarming with people. After rain walk is so beautiful. But I missed one thing which I have been missing from quite some time - the rainbow.

Ramdhenu is the Assamese word for rainbow. I am not a linguist so I might not be correct. I think ramdhenu literally means the bow of Ram (the hero of the epic Ramayana). All rainbows that I have seen were in Assam, mostly during the early days of my life in my village. Since Assam receives high rainfall and has a clear sky with less pollution, seeing a rainbow is no big deal. On special days there would be multiple rainbows. During a cricket match or while coming home from school, we would always standby to see the ramdhenu. Then we didn't have much time to romanticize or think about the reason for those multiple colours in the sky. Then I also didn't know that someday I would stop seeing them.

For me rainbows signify a bygone era which was innocent and beautiful. As rainbows have disappeared from my life, so has the era to come back in my nostalgia.