Rainy Day Reveries & Haiku

I really believe that coffee tastes better on rainy days. This morning while pouring a cup by the kitchen window, I was utterly speechless by the neon green that colored everything outside. So much so that it sparked my rainy day reveries. Come along, won’t you?

Ahmedabad, India

If I was in India right now, my view would be supplemented with the smell of frying pakoras (savory tempura like fritters) for breakfast. I can say with surety that not a single rainy day of my childhood slipped by without eating hot pakoras. Rain = Pakoras. It was a simple formula. These days though, je suis paresseuse about frying things (that’s “lazy” as the French would say). So the loss is all mine.

• 

Chicago, Illinois

More staring in the backyard with my hot cup of coffee took me back to Garfield Conservatory in Chicago. It’s a magical place with a jolt of oxygen that will make your lunges sing! If you can imagine such a thing. I pulled up the pictures from our last visit there in 2017 and I was mesmerized all over again by the beautiful foliage. I missed all those times when I’d take the Green Line L train to the conservatory and sketch in my book. Enough to pull out my sketchbook this morning and draw a few leaves.

Venice, Italy

Lastly, let me take you to a very rainy evening in Venice, circa 2004. Dev and I, fresh out of college had somehow convinced our new bosses that it was perfectly okay to take a month off work, and backpack around Europe. It was early december. We took a late train to Venice from Rome and arrived at the door of our hostel to find out that the reservation was for tomorrow night. Basically this was my first ever travel screw up, since I was the one incharge of making our lodging reservations.

Since it was the slow season, the owner was more than happy to let us have our room that night. After depositing our bags, we left again and tried to find a place to eat. We found a lone bistro still open where I ate a hot bowl of white bean soup with my socks still wet from walking around in the rain. Watching Devang finish his meal, then drink a cup of coffee and write postcards. I was so in love! I took a picture of him which I still have. Wish I could have shared it with you right now. But alas, it sits in a box in our other home.

Rainy Day Haiku

Rain drops from the sky
Make me drink lots of coffee and
Think of days gone by.

-C.G. 05/20/2020

Feature Image: Peter Secan