Reminiscences 06 - Umbrellas, The Green Revolution Poem by Unnikrishnan Sivasankara Menon

'Rain, rain, go away
Come again another day',
everyone in the school would have prayed.

As I have mentioned in the chapter on Monsoons, rains start on the day the school reopens after the two-month long summer holidays. From the very first day, we used to reach the school fully drenched. Even if we had umbrellas. But not many had them. When I started my school, I was bequeathed the old umbrella used by my elder sister. She had graduated to High School and was rewarded with a new umbrella. Umbrellas needed money to pay for, and money was scarce.

Many of the classmates came to school soaked in the rain. Some held a large banana leaf over their head. Some others had a large leaf of colocasia. I was lucky to have a real umbrella, albeit a used one that had lost its original black colour to faded greyness. Through a few holes in it, I could watch the overcast skies. On the way to school some children would join me to share its shade.

As a tiny kid I did not understand why some had only leaves for umbrellas. I would have thought that it was their choice. At home, during the weekend, I played with my younger brother with leaves of banana or colocasia standing in for umbrellas.