Rant 81: My love-hate relationship with Rain

When I was little, I hated rainy days. Absolutely did. For the simple reason that I was unable to go outside and play. Of course, this was back in the east-Indian city of Jamshedpur when the rainy season lasted no more than a month or so.
But having spent the last four-and-a-half years in the south-western part of India - where rain accounts for half the number of seasons - it's much harder to ignore it.
I'll admit, I still hate that it prevents me from going outside, but it was this very fact that allowed me to view it from a slightly different perspective today. An 18-200mm perspective to be precise!
I pursue my hobby of Lawn Tennis at a local club, which requires me to wake up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am. My bed lies just below my living room window and when I awoke this morning, I followed my usual ritual of looking up to see how much of dawn had broken, and was greeted by this (top right).
Now, this kind of opening to the day is not uncommon obviously and there have been several false alarms regarding impending rain straight after. However, I wanted to wait a bit before getting ready so that if it did rain, I could just go back and finish my sleep. I waited 20 mins, no rain. 30, no rain. Brilliant! I proceeded to make a strong cup of coffee, which guaranteed an instant brain kick-start and total awakening. Lo and behold! Just as I finished my cuppa, the heavens opened up.

I've never figured out how the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs" came to be. I mean, there have been freak cases where it's rained frogs and leeches, but never cats or dogs. Not that I intend to patent anything like, "It's raining frogs and leeches" (or maybe the French already have, who knows?). Anyways, I decided to have a little foray with the camera.
I headed out to my balcony and was immediately drawn to the line of water droplets building up on the parapet above me. It's like looking at a monstrous pearl necklace, only the pearls are constantly falling off to be replaced by new ones, (a woman's ultimate dream perhaps???).
However, try as I might, I could not capture the exact moment of when a droplet was falling off, or should I say the moment when it was in the air. All kinds of experimentation failed, from using flash to increasing the ISO and shutter speeds to crazy levels. But nothing worked. The moment of release for the droplet was just too unpredictable, and hence the fastest shutterspeed could not make up for a slow response time on my part. If anybody out there has a suggestion, please do leave a comment or email me at bibhashdash@gmail.com

But then, just as I had lost all hope of capturing a dramatic moment, the droplet fell, I followed its path, and it was time to dance. There was something so chaotic, and yet so simple and elegant, in the way they randomly burst upon the ledge. And I danced along with them. Switching my shooting to "burst mode", I was led by the elusive droplets, chasing them all along the ledge and everytime, they gave me different beats. Mother Nature's platinum album!

Thirty minutes and 150-odd images later, the rain at last ceased.






It left some lush green memories in its wake


and some unseemly ones as well....

But overall, I learned that no matter how much one may dislike rain, it is one of the most beautiful....


Oh crap, it's started again...