why you hate the rain ...

it's actually the persistent rain. the incessant rain. that's the one you hate. the rain that keeps on pouring for a day, or worse, for more than one day. you hate this kind of rain because it makes for a bleak day. it ruins your mood. it dampens your otherwise upbeat spirit.


you have had a good sleep and woke up feeling fresh and rejuvenated. invigorated. the struggles of the previous day forgotten. you look forward to meeting this new day's challenges head on again. confident that you will do better this time. so you get up early, take one long inspired inhalation and then do one long lazy exhalation, trying to visualize the life giving currents of air slowly exit your nostrils, much like that yoga practitioner you read in one of your exercise books. then you smile at the sunbeams piercing the distant clouds overhead. and you silently offer a prayer at this new lease of life.


and then, without any warning, the sunbeams retract, the clouds turn gray, and rain falls. just like that. immediately, looking at the raindrops, you intuitively know, this is not going to be that short-minute rain. and you brace yourself. this will be one of those times when the rainclouds do not seem to empty themselves up in one heavy outburst. this will be one of those times when the rains will fall leisurely, stretching towards the entire day, the entire night, then through the following day. drop by drop by drop, testing your patience, the heavens knowing that you are terribly aching to spend a good day outside, and teasingly it does not allow you that luxury, when you have primed yourself for one. oh, for heaven's sake! you heave a sigh in frustration.

this kind of rain is a revealer. after a good long while, you find the street outside your house had started to get flooded. water had accumulated. those garbage you disposed of haphazardly, irresponsibly, are now clogging the waterways to the canals. the unrelenting bombardment of the raindrops has found those small holes in your tin roof which you should have fixed when the weather was fine, but procrastinated from doing so, and thus inside your house you gazed at your wooden ceiling, disbelieving, as water seeped down in so many places. you scamper in all directions, trying to put catch basins, cups, small pails, rags, on the spots where water drops down from the ceiling.

and you curse the rain. this incessant rain.
and you hate this rain, this persistent, unrelenting rain.

yet, at the back of your mind, you know why you hate this rain. it is because it did not conceal the bad things you did. it revealed the irresponsible you.

and so you sit inside your house, looking with thinning patience as water dropped down from your ceiling, reciting this childhood poem reverently --

rain, rain, go away
come again another day,
little johnny wants to play
rain, rain, go to spain
never show your face again!