Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain...

Romantic imagery connected to rain is rampant enough to be clichéd. A recent one in public memory is when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle returned to England the last time, in March. Them grinning at each other, their side profiles to us, under a big black umbrella gained its magic from the downpour. “The picture that I took of Harry and Meghan in the rain recently, I’ve never had a reaction to a picture like that one. In terms of the reaction I’ve had from people, that’s got to be the most iconic from that point of view,” photographer Samir Hussein told Us Weekly.

There is something about the word ‘rain’ that brings out our inner Romeo or Juliet. The sound of even the lightest drizzle glues us to the window, or sends us rushing in to make a cup of steaming tea. It is like a signal from the sky to go slow, take it easy. Staying in when it is pouring cats and dogs, when the whole world has gone gray, is so Devdas, so Mirabai. The mood is that of yearning, of aching. The acoustics are musical – the sound of an escalating downpour, the sound of fat raindrops falling on your roof, the thunder and lightning, they all make you feel that certain feeling.

Lovers have tried to usurp the scenery of rain from time immemorial. Everyone claims to think of their one true love when it rains. From the nursery rhyme Rain, rain, go away to Bob Dylan’s A hard rain’s a-gonna fall, songs freely wax lyrical over rains. Books have focused on the monsoons and movies have unforgettable scenes of a drenching.

We watched Nargis and Raj Kapoor singing Pyar hua ikrar hua, Smita Patil and Amitabh Bachchan singing Aaj rapat jaaye toh, Aamir Khan and Rani Mukherjee singing Aankhon se tune keh diya... ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head,’ we heard in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Death rites during rains are another staple trope on film; the Malayalam movie Ee Ma Yau has a funeral during a heavy shower.

Thunderstorms accompany dramatic moments on screen. In real life, though, rains come and go as they please; rarely are we able to synchronise dialogue to the weather. But when Mother Nature dims the lights, switches on the rainfall stereo, air-conditions the outdoors and everything is wet to your touch, theatrics are self-introduced into your drab life. One can get addicted to petrichor, the scent of rain-soaked soil.

To quote author Neil Gaiman: ‘There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won't remember and that she can't even let herself think about because that's when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it's always raining a slow and endless drizzle….’

Water coming steadily down your car’s windscreen, bedroom window, balcony or terrace is a hypnotic sight, its pitter-patter suddenly soothing, arresting dark thoughts, a metaphoric washing. And if we are really lucky, it all ends with a rainbow in the sky.

Shinie Antony is a writer and editor based in Bangalore. Her books include The Girl Who Couldn't Love, Barefoot and Pregnant, Planet Polygamous, and the anthologies Why We Don’t Talk, An Unsuitable Woman, Boo. Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Asia Prize for her story A Dog’s Death in 2003, she is the co-founder of the Bangalore Literature Festival and director of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival.