Rambling About Rain

It has been raining in Kuala Lumpur lately especially in the evening. I don’t know about others, but me, I love it when it rains because it’s cooling. I can enjoy my lunch at the Zenith without breaking a single sweat – but not when you have a good sambal belacan to go with. I don’t have to loosen up my tie during Friday prayer but in turn it makes me half asleep listening to the khutbah and I can always open up my green & white umbrella I got from EconSave for use. Apart from that, rain has always drifts away my mind into beautiful lines of songs like those in Sudirman’s, B.J Thomas’ Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head and Crying In The Rain by Whitesnake, just to name a few. But, the irony is, at the same time I would also associate myself with flood back in my mind. Not like those flash floods in Kuala Lumpur that would halt traffics and drown cars and cats and give good reasons for the husbands to be late home but the kind of flood that I found it so pleasing and interesting when I was a child.

Towards the end of the year, people in the East Coast of the peninsular would anticipate the monsoon season to come. Nothing new; even when my late great grand father was a child he had heard great stories about the annual flood from his forefathers. They were all well-prepared long before the first drop of rain comes. I was even puzzled to see boats were made stand-by at the houses in the lowland area of Peringat when I was a kid for our area we did not need until such preparation. We might see big waters like an ocean spreading throughout the village but I had never heard doing much harm except for a few goats got stuck – hell of a concern by the owners. You’d love to see those chickens with wet feathers huddle together warming up their bodies, making the kind of pleasant shivering tweet-tweet noise; nothing close as you see those skimpily-clad “chickens” in Chow Kit flock together hunting for preys, betcha. And those ducks; swimming and diving, wagging their tails besieged with their quacks as if it was a wet T-Shirt competition in a party to them.

It had been 3 days non-stop heavy rain. We couldn’t go anywhere especially when water level was on the rise. I heard folks telling water start to cross the main road. All I know I was slouching on the mat looking up at the spiders spinning their webs. I used to boast to my kids seeing it before my eyes about spiders unlike them just get to know it through the Discovery Channel. And the water dropped from the leak in the roof. We had no ceiling, just roof and water just came straight down. Sometimes I had fun looking up waiting for the water to drop on my face, at times, hard hit straight in the eyes. We had the metal container to hold the water, wait for it to chirk with waters splattered all over before I’d empty it. It made nice “ting-tong” sound when it’s empty.

Granny just had my favourite ubi kayu with grated-young-coconut ready, together with fried salted ikan gelama, very timely for my hungry stomach. We had other choices like ubi keling, ubi itik and ubi badak (what sorta animals are they?) as well but on the menu today was happened to be ubi kayu. Loved it. I could not resist the steamy ubi kayu straight from the pot. Quickly I put into my mouth because it was too hot on my fingers. Just when I thought it was alright, with some slurping sound, start chewing it, but then hot ubi kayu stucked on the ceiling of my mouth that would rather automatically pushed my chin up, looking at the roof – begging for help from the spiders.

Back then I did not understand why the youngsters were so eager to wait for the rain to stop and go play with the water until I was big enough to understand the thrill of peek-a-boo of ladies’ legs in their attempts not to wet their sarung when they are at the flood shoreline. I heard there were always love in the air due to this fiesta. The only thing I knew, I had a whale of time seeing many people out to play with water but nothing more entertaining than playing paper boats with Arif and Fadhil.

I was not done with my ubi kayu just yet. The cold weather induces your bladder to pee more frequently than you ever wanted. My old folks said I was mischievous but I said I was adventurous. My idea of adventurous was while enjoying my ubikayu, I had my kain sarung covered that made me look like doing nothing but inside there, I pee through the gap between the planks in the floor of the house.

It was nice to hear the sound when it hits the water especially when the water level was just a few inches below.