Pathetic Fallacy

Pathetic Fallacy (n.) - poetic practice of attributing human emotion or responses to nature, inanimate objects, or animals. The practice is a form of personification that is as old as poetry, in which it has always been common to find smiling or dancing flowers, angry or cruel winds, brooding mountains, moping owls, or happy larks.

Emotions to nature, huh? Let's see. I don't think anyone would have come up with this: Cruel rains.

Flashback:

15th May 2009: "You should arrange for someone to pick you up from the guesthouse because it rains cats and dogs here", my boss said to me. "If it starts raining, sometimes it rains continuously for 2-3 days", someone else said to me. "Stupid you, you should have thought that you are going to Gujarat where it rains a lot", my conscience said to me. "Oh yeah? Whatever." I replied to each one.

15th June 2009:

Me: Oh f**k, it isn't raining here. Wasn't it supposed to? I was warned by bloody everyone that it f**king starts raining here by the 7th of June. I want it to rain.

Stephen: B***h!! It shouldn't rain. I hate that thing.

Me: Dude, it hasn't been raining in India this year and it's f**king important for the economy. It should rain b***h.

Stephen: Haan, so let it rain everywhere in India except here. Why the f**k do you want it to rain here, b***h?

Me: 'Coz I like rain.

Stephen: Biiiiiitttttt******hhhhh.

22nd June 2009:

After a light shower the previous day, I was mulling buying a raincoat, and therefore, I asked my room-mate where I could get one. (Cause I haven't yet been able to figure out what you get where in Gujarat. It took me 40 days to find a shop where I could buy Dhokla.) And he replied if I wanted it just then. And voila, that was the moment my laziness was looking forward to, and I found an excuse. Why not wait till it starts raining proper? And so, I waited.

That day, Stephen returned from Mumbai with a raincoat and an umbrella. That quelled all the remaining desire I had to buy a raincoat, because he surely wouldn't be using both at the same time. Would he?

And then, the heavens looked like they would open, and open they did. But not for so long. We got into a car and went back to the guesthouse. And it started raining everyday, but thankfully, only in the evenings when we usually found someone to take us back.

25th June 2009: At the notice board:

Dear employees,

This is to inform you that the coming Saturday and Sunday, 27th and 28th of June, 2009 will be working days. All employees will be provided with holidays on Tuesday and Wednesday, 30th of June and the 1st of July 2009 in lieu of the weekend.

Seeking your co-operation,

Manager, HR

26th June 2009: As the clock was striking 9 in the night, guesthouse-mates had an idea. Go for a movie. New York. The next 3 hours passed amid frequent power failures, non functioning air-conditioner troubles and some naps in the middle of the amazingly badly directed movie, which I wouldn't even counsel my worst adversary to watch. Proper sleep wasn't to come till about 1 in the night.

Back to the Present:

Here your humble author is sitting in front of his friend's laptop, because someone in the factory cared so much about your author's laptop that he sat on it as fondly as a hen sits over her egg to hatch it, working on a saturday, drenched in rain, with his trousers completely wet writing this post kicking himself for not buying a raincoat and using Stephen's raincoat in the morning while daring to ride pillion on a motorbike when it was raining like hell, thinking about existential issues like the raison d'etre of rainfall, planning to buy a raincoat as soon as possible, though he is sure, dear readers, that he will convince himself otherwise by the time it's time to buy one. Because, if it's raining, then he wouldn't be able to go out and buy one. And if it isn't, why buy one at all?

So, cruel rains it is then. Because when it rains occassionally, it's a welcome break, but when it rains everyday, it disrupts everything dear readers. It disrupts everything.