The Romance of the Tropics

After my hopeful posting of poems for the rainy season it did not rain again. Then yesterday evening we were playing badminton, when grey clouds moved in swiftly to cover the sky, and a brisk breeze sprang up. I recently bought a book on watercolour technique, so I saw the sky as a series of grey washes, each fraying into the next. There was a pleasant intermittent rumbling of thunder in the distance.

Then the clouds began to recede, and the breeze died down a bit. The sky brightened. It was as if the whole thing had gone into rewind.

Abruptly the sky darkened again, and fat drops of rain fell. We sat on the veranda and said, It's coming, it's coming!

In five minutes it was all over, leaving the air still saturated with water. We were abandoned, perspiring and dissatisfied. The temperature had not dropped even a degree. Mosquitoes grazed languorously upon us.

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