Fountains

I was walking on the pavement along IIT’s main road today, playing this game ‘Crazy’ on my cellphone. It’s one of those battleship style games, where you have to eliminate blue moles with your cannon. I find myself curiously addicted to it. So when I felt a spattering of water droplets, the first place I looked was up. I hadn’t expected rain. Turns out, it wasn’t rain. It was an impromptu fountain from the very holey rubber pipe that had been left to water the grass beside the pavement. I stood there in that gentle fountain for a minute, eliciting curious glances from passersby. It felt good.

I remembered how K and I used to make fountains with the water hose while watering our vegetable patch in YOL. Race, our dog, would run wildly about, trying to dodge our fountain, digging up all Amma’s carefully planted peas in his frenzy. I remembered Holi celebrations past where R and G and A would hose me down till I lay on the ground covered with grass and mud, begging for mercy. I remembered giggling madly as we dropped water balloons on the heads of people walking below, on our street in Delhi.

Then I glanced down at my phone and found that the blue moles had killed me.