It's raining again......

It's raining again today.

When it rains during the winters, a different kind of cold wave chills and bites down your body. Especially in this part of the country, where it gets below zeros in winter, added rainfall is one of the most dreadful weather you could ever imagine to be in.

My mother lights up coal in the evening, which would serve the two purposes. One, our dinner would be cooked on them, and the most important other, that we would get to warm our hands and legs on the heat once the dinner is ready.

When it's winter and rainy, only one thing can be prepared for dinner at my home. We call it litti. It's a famous delicacy of the state of Bihar. It's a round-shaped dish made of wheat flour stuffed with a flavorful stuffing of powdered gram called Sattu, baked over the burning wooden coal, giving it a crispy golden brown covering. It's usually dipped in pure ghee before eating and is served with chokha, made up of boiled and mashed potatoes, and tomatoes. 

What do you miss the most about your home, "litti chokha" would be the response of the 100 out of 100 people you ask this question to the people of this state living outside the region. That's the legacy and pride that this dish carries.

Getting back to the day, roasting the litti's over the wire mesh on the flame,   I remember getting lost in my thoughts. It took me past two years to the time I was in college.

I am a 90s kid by birth, but by heart, I might be 80s or 70s. These old school thought, and Ideas brought my chances to find a date in college nearly to zero. But, I finally met a girl with similar old school thought during my penultimate year of graduation.

The Memory of one particular day takes over my mind. the weather was as gloomy as it is today and by a stroke of luck, It so happed that we found each other sitting alone in a college outing bus. 

As the bus reached its destination, we stepped out of the bus, and in the process got a little wet from the downpours. Even though we had an umbrella with us, it couldn't help us remain dry. We started walking down the street. Then started the crazy part, we had a smirky look at each other, our eyes spoke the language which only our hands could understand. We folded our umbrella's and shoved them back into our backpacks. the only two people on the entire road without an umbrella over our heads were the crazy us. Forgetting all the worries and work, we kept walking the rain and waterlogged side of the road the entire time. We grabbed everything in our sight to eat that day. Since our stops were mostly the roadside stalls the main worry, i.e., money was easily taken care of. We had steaming hot sweetcorn, followed with spring rolls, noodles, chole bhature, lassi, and rounded it up with golgappe.

There are a dozen of things that we want to do life for fun. It gets relatively tougher to do them as we grow older. It's never the lack of intent but we need a push from someone as crazy as us for doing them. We all have our inner child alive inside us but to let our inner child breathe freely is a different ball game altogether. Her company was a similar push to me.

I am usually terrible at recollecting past events, but I remember that day distinctly. Stuffing yourself while being drenched in the rain, and then again getting drenched to stuff something more is a too epic experience to forget. The food had an added taste that day, but who knows it may be the company that added some flavours. I got a chance to be wild in the rain that day, and I don't remember the time I did it before that day. It was also the last time ever that, I did that. 

Getting a fever and cold for the two days after would also count for helping me remember the day but that would take the lowest of precedence amongst the other events. 

All It Takes is a little push from someone special to transition you from the usual mode to beast mode. Though everybody's beast mode is very different from others. But until you have seen and stayed with a person in their beast mode, you can never claim to know them well. I love to be with people when they are in that mode. I believe that people are their original selves for the time they are in that mode. The rest of the time they are mostly all same, trying to fit into the unsaid rules that the society sets. And that's the mode that helps you connect with people who becomes special in your life and that's when you create memorable stories in life. The ones that you can recollect, and one that leaves you with a smile on your face when you remember them on the days when life seems to be unbearable. 

This is my story, and it was my friend Shivangi who gave me that push that day. What's your story, and more importantly who is your Shivangi.

image: The roasting process of litti