The Umbrella Man

Suman inhaled deeply. How she loved the smell wafting in the air after the first raindrops hit the parched, dry soil close on the heels of the scorching heat of summer! She rushed out of her house. As she opened the black gate in the front and stepped out onto the road, she noticed big wet marks on the dusty soil. Soon a few of those drops fell onto her arms. She stretched them out fully and lifted her face up to the sky, holding her mouth wide open. 

By now, she could feel raindrops falling on all parts of her body. She giggled like a small child. It was only the day before yesterday she had read that the monsoon was going to hit Kerala in a couple of days. 

“How nice Hyderabad seems to be getting the monsoon rains ahead of Kerala,” she thought.

This is my second lucky day, she thought. The previous day, Suman was surprised to receive a call from Sangeeta around noon time which was a very odd time for her to call.

When she picked up the call she heard Sangeeta yelling at the other end “Did you see?’

“See what?”

“Go out. See the Sun. OMG, it’s so beautiful!”

“What is so beautiful?”

“You go on to the terrace and see it for yourself.” Saying these words, Sangeeta had hung up on her.

When Suman ran upstairs, what she saw took her breath away. In fact, she hardly believed her eyes. There it was - a rainbow coloured wide ring circled around the Sun. She was seeing such a thing for the very first time in her life. She took a few photographs of that mind-blowing image from various angles. 

This was the topic of discussion that evening over dinner between herself and her husband Dinesh. Dinesh, who was in a long Zoom meeting at that moment as part of his charity work missed a significant part of it, and he had to console himself with the photographs clicked by his wife.

It was Dinesh who explained to Suman that this optical phenomenon was a result of the refraction of sunlight over ice crystals present in the atmosphere. 

Suman loved rains. She had always loved them. In her childhood, as soon as she got down from the school bus, she would take off the Rain Coat and walk home. By the time she reached home, she would be dripping wet inviting all sorts of rebuke from her mother. She also loved being fussed over by her mother thereafter.

Suddenly Suman heard the honk. That’s when she turned to notice her husband’s car right next to her. He had gone out to get some provisions for the house and had just made it back. He got down from the car with an umbrella. Holding it above both their heads he gently led his wife back into the house. The drizzling rain, by then, had become a downpour.

“You never grow up. Do you?” he asked smiling at his seventy-year-old wife.

“And you never stop being my umbrella man, do you?” she quipped looking fondly into his eyes.

“Never. And you know that. Don’t you?”

“Yes. My Umbrella Man. I do.” She said chuckling away.

As they both sat together relaxing in front of the TV, her mind went back to the day she met Dinesh. It was a rainy day too. She had got back from the University where she was doing her PhD. That day she had borrowed quite a few books from the library. Though the walk to her house was hard of five minutes, she couldn’t risk getting those books wet. Unfortunately, she hardly cared to carry an umbrella.

As it was getting dark, she started to worry. She knew that particular stretch was deserted and dark without any traffic light and was not very safe at the night. That’s when she saw a man getting down from the bus. As soon as he got down, she recognized him as the person whom he saw sometimes at that every bus stop.

As soon as he got down, he gave a cursory glance at her before taking his umbrella out. But instead of walking out, he seemed to hesitate. She froze in her place when he came and sat down at the far end of the bench at the bus stop. Now they were the only two people at the bus stop and she started to worry about his intentions.

After what seemed like an eternity, he got up. When she was about to heave a sigh of relief, she saw him approach her slowly. She held her breath and avoided looking at him.

He coughed as though to signal his presence but she still didn’t look at him.

“Excuse me. The rain forecast says it is going to rain through the night today.”

“This is what I need right now. A weather forecast and that too a bad one!” She thought to herself as she continued to look down.

“I see so many books in your hand. Please take my umbrella.”

She was shocked to hear those words. When she looked up at him, he hurried on to add “you can return it tomorrow at this very bus stop.”

“But you would get wet” she blurted out.

“It’s okay. You need it more than I do” he said.

That chance meeting led to many more meetings afterwards. The shy, reticent and kind-hearted Dinesh won her over soon. She ended up marrying him two years later. Since then she would refer to him as her “Umbrella Man”. 

She knew in her heart of hearts, Umbrella symbolically stood for the overall safety net Dinesh provided her in their life of togetherness over the last 42 years.