The first drops from Heaven : Blog # 208

The first drops from Heaven

Years before, when life was much simpler, when my dreams were not bound by the fences of reality, when I was a child, I remember asking my Grandmother on a Sunday evening as to what that wonderful scent was. She told me it is the scent of the earth. It is the heavenly smell of the first rain. She told me that for one to experience the rain and its scent, one needs to be a bit far from the madness. Then, I thought she was referring to only the hustle and bustle of the city where I lived.

Once I was walking back home. It was summer at its peak and all of us had been hoping for the clouds to shed some kindness. Out of the blue, when we least expected it, started the first rain. Big drops of water emerged which momentarily disappeared in the dried up brown soil in spite of their pearl like heaviness. Many of us took shelter in the road side shops. There was a person waiting with us and he started walking out of the shop. He did not have an umbrella.  He just walked getting drenched in that rain. He looked back at all of us standing at the door step of the shop and smiled. There wasn't even one face in that little crowd which did not reciprocate the smile. At that moment, I realized my grandmother was referring to the madness within too.

I think there is more to this smell than just a pleasant assault on the nose. It is a culmination of various emotions. On the surface of it, it indicates the beginning of an end – of the tiring, sultry summer. It is the harbinger of more pleasant days in the offing. It indicates lesser lines of worry on our foreheads when we look at the sun. This scent is apparently called ‘Petrichor’.

If you think a bit deeper, we realize it is metaphorical to life in more ways than one. Look at the nature around you during the first rain. It is as if the lives around us wake up from a long exhausted slumber. The trees, the animals are all rejuvenated. The energy this rain brings along with it spreads almost like a majestic wave of river washing across a dried up forest. Don’t you think certain people or certain moments in our lives are also like this? People just walk in or moments of gravitas just manifest in our lives as a whiff of fresh air. It may be by design or by serendipity. But they are indeed among Life’s little surprises which we all wait for to come by.

At times in Life, we come across long spells of summer. They try to hallucinate us in to believing that our lives are destined to have only that single lone season - of a sultry summer. We try hard to find a respite.  It is then that we should think of the first rain. Drive down the life’s lane a bit farther and we will see the clouds of hope patiently waiting for us to pass by them to shed their kindness on to us... 

Keywords : Rain, First rain, petrichor, scent of earth, smell after first rain

Tweet