The Hole-y Umbrealla

Note: This Blog is now part of Void's Best of Me
When you live in Mumbai, you become as accustomed to rain as you are to the sun. Rain in July is like sun in the desert, it looms continuously, slow or furious, hardly relenting its furious siege of the city until the oceans scream and promise vengeance on ships that dare to stray. And more often than not, even that is not enough. In the moments the siege cease, dark clouds haunt the sky, reminding people of the coming battle. But it takes more than a bout of rain to dampen the spirits of Mumbai, the crowds barely diminish on the local trains or buses, although everyone seem to carry the identical black umbrellas. With the same instinct that you put up your hand to shield your face against ferocious sunrays, an umbrella shoots out, the shield against the relentless rain. A few other colors and patterns obviously stand out in an otherwise impeccable black wall formed along the pedestrian paths.

In this black wall, often a trusty umbrella adorned the role of a brick. Trusty to me, not to rain. When it comes to rain, my whims are harder to match than perhaps the most inarticulate of women. In a drizzle I might want my umbrella up and in a downpour I might want to get wet. I dont know, it all depends on the mood and of course the situation. And this umbrella never complains, just a trusty comrade, used for three months and then thrown aside in a box full of garbage that nobody uses, for the rest of the year. It never complains! It has never even betrayed.

One day sitting in a classroom full of boring people and an idiotic professor, I started tinkering with my trusty comrade and to my enormous surprise I found holes in the umbrella... although tiny ones, but holes none the less. And I wondered how is it still holding the rain. But with the class my mind drifted off the subject to other interesting things as I had just noticed Angelina Jolie peeking from the crude paper cover of somebody's notebook.

In the following days, many times it crossed my head to take a look at the umbrella again. But I didnt, perhaps as inseparable as it was, I never really considered it to be of great value. How often, how wrong are we. I like to tell myself it was because I always remembered the thing at the wrong time, and I just waited for the right time to come. Unfortunately at the right time, it never came back to me. And the hole-y umbrella continued the struggle against the relentless seige. Never once it betrayed me, always up and open whenever I needed to reach somewhere in dry state. A great comrade, a worthy possession. Each penny of the mere seventy bucks I paid for it, undervalued.

I look back today, at the turn of events as by my side lies the warrior. The handle seprated, the clothe coming apart, the bars bent. The finally defeated warrior. The failure is sudden and total, without any chance of repair.

You say to me, it was just an umbrella. Of course it was, but thats not the point, is it? The holes, the beaten exterior... signs of war... yet providing constant protection. Look around to see if you can find your "Hole-y Umbrella"
Note2: This blog post is written in jest.