The rain was a fine mist, incessant and untiring. The morning looked no different from the late afternoon – it was always the same stark grey till the lazy evening cast her shroud of darkness over the bleak day. It’s strange how it took the boring hue to bring out the green, when the sun wasn’t around with its warm and bright glare but was lost in the labyrinth of deep and angry clouds who had been lurking all week like intimidating warriors of the ancient times.

Spring was here. The calendar on the wall, the date on your phone would tell you that. But on the slow day, as you walked out, turning the collar against the fierce winds from the nearby lake, you shiver and try in vain to warm your hands, rubbing them together, against the chill that could reach your bones, if allowed.

A strange place to be lost in, battling the fickle weather, where the long afternoons give way to soot-black nights. As if evening is a disgruntled, haughty lady, making only the briefest entrance just to keep up appearances.

The wet shoes that would later squeak on the tiles, the moist, warm socks making your toes curl, as you trudge against the wind, uphill jumping over puddles and landing directly in some. The soft rain pelted tirelessly on your face, not quite drenching you but imperceptibly stealing the little warmth you had.

It was like walking through the damp and woolly clouds, as if they had stooped down from the heavens to the lowly earth for petty recreation. As the tired workers straggled home at the end of their day, pushing through the wind, scarcely guarded against the rain, the rain would sometimes come down roaring, like hoodlum teenagers playing games, their laughter apparent in the distant thunder, as the rains would catch the throngs unaware drenching them or making them run for cover, just before the downpour would become a trickle and the people would be left frustrated.

But the misty, fine rain at the end of a tired, slow day felt like sweet pricks of salvation as I dragged myself, homeward bound. You could almost taste heaven as you smiling closed your eyes against the soft drops.

And on my usual walking route home, as I crossed the barbed-bridge above the winding train tracks, I paused to stare at the myriad of greens lining the brown tracks like a mother clasping her child against her heart. I followed the trail till the tracks turned away from my view. And suddenly in a moment suspended in time, as I stood staring in that stolen moment of a busy life, as the sound of the cars disappeared in the distance, and all I could hear was the faint echo of the train that just passed by and the soft thudding of the rain around me, feeling the wet, cleansing drops on my arid face, I felt, momentarily, that there was a paradise in this world too.