Aroma of the raindrops

Param took a deep breath, inhaling the fresh air from his surroundings.

The parched soil outside his apartment had just got the first showers of the season. He looked beyond the balcony, raindrops falling on the narrow driveway overlooking his apartment. He could smell the fresh scent of the wet soil.

Nothing smells as soothing as the soil when it rains after a dry summer spell.

Manju would have arrived by now. But this sudden shower, she may have been caught in the traffic. She carries a scent of the misty perfume whenever she visits his house. And the fragrance, he could sense it right when Manju sets her feet on the entrance.

Smell of his love, he closed his eyes … and took a deep breath again. The aroma from the soil seemed pure romance.

All things don’t need to be seen … to feel is heavenly too!

On that day he had taken the day off, just to spend some time with Manju. She was in the city on a work trip, extending it to cover the weekend with her lover.

A bottle of Bordeaux lay on his glass table top. He wanted to uncork it, but preferred to wait. Manju loved the sound of the cork popping out, followed by the fresh flavour of the red wine. May be she could open it.

There are days when flavours mingle, and today could be such a day, Param wandered.

The doorbell rung, he felt the odour of misty perfume. She gave a naughty wink as she entered, rubbing her shoes on the door mat. Manju was partly wet, at least her soft hairs were dripping, and so were the sleeves of her petite looking pink shirt.

But the rain had done her what the perfume could not. Her misty flavour was now merged with a humid essence. Param could sense an effect, it was electrifying.

A few drops of rainwater from her untied hair fell on the floor. By then, he had embraced her in a tight hug. Her entire body had an odour – a mix of her perfume, the humid air from the rains … and the collective spurt of her excited hormones.

Param rubbed his nose with hers, his hands slip under her shirt in an effort to touch her fragrant body contours. She was breathing heavily. As she uttered a faint moan, he could sense her exhaled air smell that much raw in passion.

He was in a mood to breathe today! And he left no areas of her body that he could not lay his nose into. The scent of raw passion, he felt, could leave one’s nose so full.

Soon they were joined … in pursuit of the flavour of bodily love. Much later, as he lay alone with his eyes closed, he could romance the fragrance around.

And then he sensed the sound of the cork popping out of the Bordeaux bottle. He got up from the couch. A pronounced whiff of the red wine, he couldn’t have missed. Manju had two glasses in her hand, her dishevelled shirt barely masking a cosy foreplay they had gotten into a few minutes back.

‘Raindrops seem golden when passions run high, as goblets add a fragrance of life’, whispered Param as he raised his drink to that of Manju’s.

‘You smell like the night we first touched each other’, Manju muttered as she led her hands into his hair. He was almost sitting on her lap, in his attempt to cuddle her more.

The two kept talking, as if they had been united for decades. It was just three months that Manju had relocated, and Param was already feeling lonely. The rains had stopped for the moment, and a westerly breeze blew through the living room.

Ah, Param felt, nature couldn’t have been more soothing. The first showers, and then a cool breeze, he sipped the wine as if it was nectar from the heavenly cellar.

That was a year back, and a fresh monsoon has arrived all over again.

Soft breeze transmits the fragrance of nature faster than anything else. It breathes new life into an old flame.

Param went back to his state of hibernation. That night the pillow covers had given out the essence of musk. He breathed her … the perfume, the humid climate and the hormones … and those drops of sweat between her nostrils and the lips. She had herself breathing the way she felt Param when they had first touched each other … their palms lay entwined in an expression of conjoined copulation.

Manju is relocating again … this time to Buffalo, New York.

He kept thinking of the distance … sitting on his chair, he felt a fresh bout of breeze suddenly transcend into his balcony. It as like a fresh flow of free air from seas may be.

She wants to take him with her … to pursue a life of love away from his home.

‘Does it rain on dried soil in New York?’ ‘Does breeze blow with the nature’s aroma?’

Param could not recline on his chair … this time he had to get up and complete his files. His last day at work is tomorrow … he must rush.

The misty perfume beckoned him. Her soft palms and the area between her nostrils and lips … so raw.

He wanted to smell her breath again, across the seas … in a new land.