sound of rain drops by sannapureddy &swatee sripada (books for new readers .TXT) 📖

sound of rain drops
Sannapureddy venkataramireddy & swatee sripada


A mid-day in the last days of ♦Ashada!
Lakshmamma, making the doorsill her pillow and spreading her pallo, relaxed at It. Black clouds in the street of sky started moving slowly like a lactating buffalo towards the sunset.
Shadows dappled all over the earth without even a trace of sunlight. The earth’s heat subsided and coolness gathered. By nightfall the clouds would be ready to ooze milk. The rain would throw streams of water with pots.
This is the fourth year without a proper wetting, reservoirs and streams have had no life, ditches and lakes have never over flown with the sound of storming water. Suddenly since last two days this jostle of clouds ……..TVs have gone on stressing the depression and storm in the Bay of Bengal for the last four days. Villagers migrated to towns holding their bellies for livelihood, noticed the smell of the rain clouds and retreated to their nests like birds. The arrival of the rain looked as a dream when she imagined it.
One should see the pleasure of the villagers for the last two days! Though not a rainy season, villagers gathered at the meeting place, started to discuss the crops to be raised- based on the amount of rain. Old people with meager visibility, keeping hands on their foreheads to stare at the clouds declared that rain is a certain.
Ladies piled up the dry sticks in a corner in the kitchen; gents clambered the mud roofs and mended the covers on it.
Movement of clouds and the lightening in them as a vine …..Followed by the roaring of thunders……. never left people peaceful at one place.
Lakshmamma settled down there at the doorsill for a nap. Sleep never perched on her eyes.
Getting up and sitting she surveyed the roof of the shed. The sky pieces in the shape of one rupee coins glistened throughout the middle log.
Hen scratched the rotten hay on the roof with beaks and toes making holes. If it rains entire house would leak.
If Shiva had been at home, he would have covered it with hay or something else to prevent leaking. She herself sent him by force to Kadapa.
Its two years since Shiva stayed at home. With the similar age group youth, in search of construction work he went to town. Earning a ten or twenty and saving something for his marriage.
She got up and went to the half-wall.
Fumbled something with her hand in the pot on the vessel…….
She inspected carefully, if it leaks, anything that would get spoiled.
She arranged everything in advance as a precautionary measure but still she couldn’t derelict her mind, for self defense she checked it again.
She tried her utmost to do Shiva’s wedding. She forced him using her daughter and son in law who resided in the same village.
It’s not known whether time for the wedding had come or not but Shiva requested her not to mention his wedding till it rains.
The rain should come ….rain should satisfy the famine ….all the reservoirs and streams, ditches and lakes should look lively with the rain…..he said, and then he would marry.
Till recent times she had a worry of it. She had a worry on his innocence that linked the rain and the marriage.
Since how long was she waiting for the rain! Inspiring the villagers, she arranged the ♦garden feasts. Imploring many she made someone read ♦“VIRATAPARVAM” in the temple, did even ♦the marriages of the frogs.
If a slight movement of the clouds appeared in the sky she had thought them as the wedding porches of leaves, the lightening as the brightness of electric lights and the thundering as wedding melodies.
No big rain arrived.
Her son’s wedding never materialized.
But, by chance, news came a week before which had broken the strong link that knotted his marriage and the rain. A situation cropped up in such a way that without any kinship with the rain, he had to get ready for the marriage.
Lakshmamma’s parents belonged to a village near Kadapa.
just small scale farmers, Farmers who cultivate the lands and crop the loans.
From the day she got married they can’t even manage to invite the new wed couple or to go to them to greet. After the demise of their parents they moved far away even for a look. Her children never tasted the sweet kinship of a maternal uncle. No news reached her before a week when her elder brother expired accidentally. By the time she went there, the flood of tears receded just leaving scant wetness in the eyes of women. Brother’s daughter was just four years, two years younger to Shiva. An innocent unaware of the world, crouched in her mother’s lap remained watching all. She recalled consoling the girl holding her.
Later, she heard that her elder brother’s wife couldn’t get a proper share of the field and managed to send her away giving something. She reached Kadapa and started running a roadside stand. No information was available all these years. Swimming her own family suffocated her and where to find the leisure to think of some one else?
Suddenly a week back Shiva arrived alone from Kadapa. He saw his aunty. Her daughter has grown up. They are surviving on a small retail shop on the out skirts of Kadapa.
Though he ran in to them, leaving his friends and his construction work, why would he come back to the village? She couldn’t understand. It seems his aunty Sarojamma had a brother, a rowdy sheeter with all addictions of drinking and gambling.
Killing his wife, he went even to jail and returned. Now he started bothering his sister to get her daughter married to him. Though she refused strongly, he compelled her dominating them.
Lakshmamma stared thoughtfully in to his face. His intention is very clear. Without even introducing himself to his aunty, he had come to get his mother’s approval.
Her heart soared high.
She fetched him to bring her immediately…. If the girl accepts she can marry her to him and invite her as the daughter in law or else they can do her marriage searching a suitable match elsewhere.
Crossing the doorstep, Lakshmamma stepped into the street and looked at the sky. From the western hills it seems the legs of rain descended. Rain is definite, no doubt in it. It may wet, rivulets and streaming may overflow…… …reservoirs and ditches might get filled. Good days might come again.
Since last four years, the earth splintered, as it stumbled upon scarcity and insufficiency of water. With parched body it awaits to absorb any amount rain in to it. If a good rain comes, it will result in a requisite amount of crop. Water levels in bore wells without any dwindle may suffice even for the forth coming years. Two years hard earned crop may serve for one more year and even if a famine strikes life would go on smoothly without any troubles. As long as the wetness remains, one should work without letting the sweat evaporate.
Pondering over it Lakshmamma went and sat at the premises.
Her nostril exhaled the rain wind greedily.
Skin glands on her body eagerly feasted the wetness in the air.
As a well prepared black soil which can have all the clouds of the sky in it, she waited for the rain with heat and smoke filled mind. For the rain water…for the sound of the stormy flow …for her son ……her niece …she waited thirstily…….
**************
In the tantrums of thunder and lightening the clouds appeared as if jumping on to the land within a wink of an eye.
The gruffness of the gale went on escalating.
Loosing the self control the branches, as if obsessed, swayed and jumped and the bases of the trees vibrated entire figures with fear.
The gale had stolen off the slow drizzle, before the latter reached the land.
Offering its company to the horror of the nature, the pitch black darkness blinded every one. Already it’s almost eight in the night.
Making an ugly squeal, on the Tar road one or the other vehicle passed recurrently.
From six in the evening the vigor of wind amplified, subsequently turning into a severe storm stream.
Then a red bus from Kadapa swiftly arrived at the mud road.
Two young people in wedding clothes descended the bus. The new wed couple -Shivudu and Gowri.
As soon as the bus moved forth, he took the suitcase into hand and with other holding her, after passing a long look at the Cuddapa rout paced forth on the mud road.
Slowly his steps congregated the speed. His walk appeared as if he was dragging her holding the hand. Now and again he stretched his worried sight on to the road that brought them there.
“If we reach the village…its enough ………no body can dare any thing…” said as if murmuring.
In the brilliance of a lightning she was trying to pace fast with him.
“Your uncle never remains quiet If he knows about us in a jeep he’ll chase us” again turning back he stared at the road. She didn’t spell a word out.
Adding to the raucous wind, rain too, moved on to big drops. On the familiar path Shiva treaded as fast as possible.
Still apprehension didn’t retreat him.
He had a fear of any vehicle slowing down on the road turning on to his mud path,
To avoid that, the journey was kept as a top secret. As soon as the marriage had concluded in a temple, they scrambled in to a bus.
He had taken all the precautions of ‘eloping’ and never revealed it to any third person except Gowri’s mother Sarojamma and a close relative Rangaswamy in that street.
As the word “elope” slid in thoughts a smile bloomed on his lips.
He had heard the word frequently. Now it has come to his experience
“The rain appears to be heavy… should go fast….”
He fastened his walk. She followed him trouncing his heels.
Suddenly he had a doubt. He realized the girl following him was brought up in a town, with all comforts and without even the knowledge of troubles or normal walking on the uneven mud path. Fencing branches encroaching half the way is a difficult task, that too forcing her to walk faster with him is nothing but running, he slowed down his speed.
Reprimanding his own barbaric manner he glanced at her with regret but in that pitch black darkness her face was imperceptible.
A kind of slow din reached his ears.
Exploiting her with the fear of her uncle in contrast to the rain drops he troubled her and kept her on wheels.
Her chest might be heaving owing to the fast breathing, she didn’t reply him. Changing his fast moving into ordinary walk he started contemplating. It’s a mistake to complain her silence.
They both just had