Petrichor

It was a rainy evening and the smell of the moist air was omnipresent. Shreya sat beside the balcony with a cup of tea in her hand and an open book, the bookmark lost somewhere amidst the pages. The light wind fluttered the pages where the man was about to be killed by the dragon as his princess lay unconscious in the cave. None of this held her eyes any longer as she was lost in the music the rain brought along with it. The kind of music that untangles the lost memories in you, pulling you into the depths of nostalgia. She liked rains just for this reason and the petrichor just added to her feeling.

Shreya was a poet and her relationship with rain was well known to her and mostly to her readers. She believed that the rain had the beautiful power to rinse her mind with its fragrance and make her write. Tiny threads from her memories which broke free with each of her rendezvous with rain. Her award-winning poem was a result of one such evening and this had strengthened her relationship with rain since then. She believed the rain to be her natural best friend. An occasional visitor who arrives with such grandiose, maybe just for her.

Whenever she returned home from school, she would see her grandfather sitting on the porch with that day's newspaper. Reading it for the hundredth time maybe, searching for a piece of probable news which he would have missed in his earlier readings. His black-rimmed glasses was always on his face as far as her memory took her. The half-sleeved white baniyan and the white dhoti was his daily uniform for normal days. When he would hear her footsteps at the gate, his face would light up and a beautiful toothless smile would be awaiting her. "Dada" she used to announce before hugging him. The smell of the ayurvedic oils was always there. Something that she would always relate him with. At night, just before dinner, when she would be done with her homework and assignments, she would run to her Dada who would tell her stories. Stories from his past and stories he knew. Stories from his head and stories he had heard. Dada was full of stories. And he never repeated a story. His stories were of men and women who would do things that would shock Shreya and surprise her at times. Dogs and cats could talk to their owners. The list goes on. When she had asked how he remembers all the stories, he giggled and told her that he always kept a little book of stories for little Shreya but refused to show it to her as that would break his secret. She didn't force him much as she loved listening to the stories from him rather. There was always a story for her sorrow and her happiness. Something that would connect with her emotion and her Dada was a genius at that. The night before he died, he had told her the story of an ox who never listened to his farmer but only his little son. It was a lovely story and Dada narrated it with such a beautiful smile, his eyes gleaming through his glasses. A smile that stayed on his face even when they covered his face in the white cloth. That had been the end of Dada's stories. Evenings were never the same again. There was no longer anyone, but the memory of a man waiting for her every evening at the porch smiling the toothless smile.

A year later, when her family was shifting to another city, she was helping her mother pack all the things into boxes and throw away the things that filled the house for no reason. That day, from her Dada's shelf, she found a notebook titled "Little book of Stories for Little Shreya". Her heart raced as she pulled the book towards her and felt the handwriting of her Dada. She had opened the book expecting to read stories he had told her and maybe stories he might have left untold, but the pages were blank with just a note on the front page.
"Fill this book with your own stories. Love, Dada"
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pressed Dada's last surprise to her chest.

The thunder brought her back to the present. It was still raining in her balcony and her cup of tea had gone cold. The room was now filled with petrichor and her memories. She took a pen and her book from her shelf smiling and wrote the title of her poem.
"Dada"