A Wet Delay. (2nd position)

A Wet Delay

Zainab Shk Saifuddin 

4AF

    The city drenched in a cloudburst. As if the sky had ruptured and was dropping oceans. 

Hasan stood on a sidewalk, his umbrella wide open. They had left to visit an ailing relative but due to sudden downpour the car in which his father was coming to pick them up had collapsed in midway and his father had gone to fetch help, leaving them lingering outside, in the outpouring showers.

          

It was raining cats and dogs!

    His mother and grandma were extremely frustrated with the entire scenario and the stench of boiling gutters from the main road nearby made it even worse, but Hasan was genuinely amused watching the tiny, translucent pellets bursting and popping on the grey asphalt. He gazed from the tip of the umbrella, at the graphite sky, wondering if the bright sky had worn a lustrous silver gown made of clouds or if it had been wrapped in a dull silver paper. Studying the metallic sky, he struggled hard to fathom how zillions of droplets could just fall from the grey, velvety clouds. "Maybe the angels are spitting…. or maybe the clouds are like eggs when cracked by a few angels, drops fall out like yolks, he declared with a naughty smirk, "Or maybe they have left a million taps open" and visualized an infinite row of colossal golden taps, located in gardens of heavens, discharging gazillion liters of pure water, all at once, causing torrential rainfalls on earth. Twenty minutes had passed and there was no sign of his father returning.

    A crispy breeze drifted across, making a whistling noise and carrying the muddy scent of the motherly earth that tingled his nose, "perhaps the Earth is cooking a tasty meal" he said, envisioning a gigantic cauldron, sitting deep beneath the thick, muddy earth, filled with soil and water, boiling intensely, its sharp smell drifting through the layers and resurfacing on land.

    Billions of droplets like countless silver needles slammed on his huge umbrella creating a sharp rhythmic melody. "Maybe the rain is playing drums on my umbrella," he thought smugly.

    While he was dawdling in his illusory world, a sudden bolt cracked, as loud as a whip and a huge fork of white light split the sky, shattering it into pieces for an instant. Hasan had tremors for a moment but fissured into laughter at the speculation of God clicking an aerial picture of the world from paradise. Just moments after the thunder came a fierce squall and the trees whipped wildly as if they intended to rip themselves from the ground to join the violently dancing raindrops, in the divine theater of nature.

"A buzzing party hosted by nature!" he thought.

    As he contemplated upon everything in his surrounding, his eyes caught sight of a puddle in which vivid lights merged and reflected giving an odd, aesthetic impression. “Wow” he whispered “a liquid mirror, onto which colors and light are bleeding”

Meanwhile, all this chaos, Hasan's grandma stood tiredly in utter vexation, furious at the weather and the dead engine.

    “I told you all that we should go on a weekend, can’t all of you listen to me for once?” she snapped with a scowl. “What in heavens is taking him so long to fetch some help” she muttered, with passing moments she was getting more and more worried why her son had not returned, visioning all kinds of unfortunate incidents that might cross his way.

    And as the ferocious thunder blasted like a luminous white firework, she quaked hard, promptly grabbing her grandson's hand to maintain equilibrium. “I am going to be dead sick once I reach home,” she thought, imagining all the coughing and fever she would have to face afterward.

    The relentless ricocheting of raindrops on the umbrella was making her teeth clank in irritation, she felt as if a thousand bullets were jouncing on her head, as if she was being hammered by the rain, deep into the earth. And the drifting breeze made her shiver and sway like laundry pegged on a drying line. 

    The moisture fogged her crooked glasses which made her even grumpier and for the hundredth time, she took them off and rubbed those tiny glass plates clumsily.She despised the clear droplets crawling on her frail hand as if they were filthy insects. All the waiting was making her feel extremely drowsy and cranky. She longed for a warm cup of masala chai backed with a few bakery treats and a cozy seat. She stood tiredly on her tottering legs that once carried her effortlessly through in all conditions but they now they were fragile and demanded rest and gazed intensely at the sooty sky, it looked sad to her, “a curtain of tears it is…” she sighed with a visible frown.

It had only been thirty minutes, but it felt like an eternity!

    Finally, Hasan's father returned along with a man who had agreed to drop them and tow their car back home. They all cramped in the car, damp, except for Hasan's father, he was soaked to bones. Everyone was relieved except, Hasan craved more of this wet adventure, for him it was a scene straight out of a movie. Gloomily, he peered out of the window to see hundreds of droplets racing towards the end and immediately started placing imaginary stakes on the ones winning, and to his disappointment, the ones lagging won. Whilst, on the left side of the back-seat his grandmother perched tranquility, eyes closed, silently sighing out prayers of gratitude for their accidental savior.

As the car drove smoothly on the sloppy roads, both Hassan and his grandma, engrossed in their solitude, curled up on their muggy seats like infants nestling in their snugly cots and fell in an oblivious slumber.