The pitter patter of the raindrops against the window almost drowned out the sound of Gary’s fingers furiously tap-dancing on the keyboard. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the rumbling of the thunderous clouds. This was an unnecessary distraction he thought. Yes, the regional meteorologists had warned about the chances of sudden rains, but then again, they were almost always wrong. And in the three long years he’d been here, the “predicted rain” had never materialised. “Now, where are those ridiculously expensive BOSE noise cancelling headphones that I recently picked up?” he wondered. He had a deadline to meet, and at the moment, both time and noise from the heavy rain, were his enemies. But he was a writer and write he would, come rain or storm.
Gary Summers had transferred over from London a little over three years ago, via an internal promotion. He’d been the European columnist for his newspaper for over five years and had been itching to move over from all the political news he’d had to cover. So when the paper put in the requirement for a columnist for one of their regional lifestyle magazines, Gary had jumped at the chance. It hadn’t mattered much to him that he’d have to move to a new country and adapt to new lifestyles. He had been eager to try his hand at something different, and so far it had worked out well. His articles had often been the highlight of the magazine and he’d been promoted to the post of Assistant Editor. The next edition of the magazine was due in two days, and the editor was on holiday. And 3 members of his team had already called in sick. So along with his editorial duties, Gary had been forced to take up one of the empty slots for the articles too.
Unable to find the noise-cancelling headphones, Gary stood up in frustration. The rain was now coming down in torrents, and the windows were rumbling every time the thunderous clouds rolled by. Gary sighed. “First the writer’s block. Then these untimely rains with their surround-sound thunder” he mused as he walked towards the window. It had been a while since he’d last last written anything. “Nine months,to be precise” he thought. Most of this present day-to-day work involved restructuring sentences, editing grammar and typos and communicating with sponsors for ad-space, which technically was a sales-related function that the afore-said department refused to acknowledge. Gary stretched his body and yawned. The luminous clock showed the time to be 1:30 in the morning. He glanced longingly at his bed, the sheets of which were neatly tucked in. If he didn’t come up with an idea for the article in the next few minutes, this week’s edition would end in a fiasco with more advertisements than quality content.
Though the curtains were drawn, he could still see the yellowish tinge from the street lights through them and hear the sound of traffic too. “It’s such a far cry from back home” he mused as he made himself a cup of Indian chai. Rain was a common occurrence in London, along with the rest of Britain. And whenever it rained heavily, life as you knew it, came to complete standstill. The famed London Underground network, the otherwise laden-with-traffic roads – everything. However out here, in his present city, nothing ever seemed to slow the people down. Be it 4 pm or 4am, there were always people about. And not homeless ones like back home. People who were well off, drove around in their pearl white BMWs and golden coated Audis in the middle of the night, just because they could. “Who would ever say this place is a desert? It’s more like an architectural wonder, built out of the harsh rough sands of the desert and built upon brick by brick, or rather concrete slab on slab. Either ways, this is “home” now!” thought Gary as he walked back to his desk, where his idle iMac had gone into standby. Taking a quick glance at the drivel he’d managed so far, his fingers spontaneously hit the delete button, wiping those fonts off the crisp white background of Microsoft Word. He needed some inspiration.
Still sipping his chai, Gary walked over to the large french windows against which the raindrops were still tapping away. By the sounds of it, the rain seemed to be subsiding. Though he knew the rain water would spill over from the window sill and into the carpeted room, Gary couldn’t help but think he’d get some inspiration if opened up the windows. He slowly pulled back the curtain and unlocked the windows. As he pushed them open, he felt a light moist spray on his face. Smiling, he wiped it away with the palm of his hand. He put his head out and tried to focus on the concrete scenery in front of him. But the misty rain prevented him from seeing more than a few meters ahead. Yet the looming needled structure of the “World’s tallest building” peered back at him from high above the rain inducing clouds.
Sighing, he took a deep breath. There wasn’t going to be anything inspiring here. And that’s when he smelled it. It started off as a really mild fragrance. But there was something extra-ordinary about it. And captivating too. Gary had a sense of deja-vu as he inhaled a bit more deeply. He wasn’t sure why, but visions of his childhood in Essex sped through his mind – playing a game of football in the muddy garden with his brothers after the rain; noticing the green colour of the grass returning after a long spell of dry summer; and his pet dog Rambo taking shelter under their play area when it rained. He smiled again, but this time it wasn’t from the memories. It was the smile of having identified what the smell was. It was Petrichor – the distinctive scent which accompanied the first rain after a long warm dry spell. “Ironic that I should notice this scent in the unlikeliest of places. Who’d have thought you’d experience this glorious nostalgia inducing scent in the middle of a concrete desert?” thought Gary as he wiped away more of the misty rain from his face.
The smile still adorning his face, Gary slowly closed the window and slid the curtain back into place. He walked over to his iMac, and typed the title of his next article – “Petrichor in the Desert”
I Wrote Those - by Sid Balachandran 
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