I got caught in the rain last night. Not alone though. It came down on me almost without a warning. It went from a likeable drizzle to an angry downpour in a matter of few seconds. That's when I scurried for shelter inside this unfinished house.
The gatekeeper at the house didn't mind me standing at the non-existent door waiting for the rain to stop. Just when I was done staring at the now desolate road, that I noticed a truck parked in front of the house. A truck full of gravel , two men in its back,with shovels who were dumping the gravel by the road. They continued to work, unaffected by rain, naked except for a flimsy loincloth around their legs.
I tried striking a conversation with the gatekeeper but he didn't speak english or hindi. I tried gesticulating , asking him why those two men couldn't come inside the house and finish the job when the rain stopped . He replied but I didn't really get it. I went back to watching them work, undettered, almost unconscious of the weather. I watched them until they became two dark silhouettes in the downpour outlined by their shovels, displaced gravel and the raindrops which now slid off their bodies with increasing ease.
I tried gesticulating at them but I could see that between us we did not speak a common language.
