It’s really been no mystery… He’s had it in for me ever since the puddle I slipped in during high school. He has been a nameless foe fighting from afar, laughing in my face for I-don’t-know-how-long, but this is the first time I am documenting one of our fights. And I’d urge you to read very carefully. Because unlike most of my posts, there is a moral to this story, and it might help you sometime in life.

The Rain God has been a faceless opponent hitting me with showers every chance he got. You may be thinking “Oh, come on, Hammy. That happens to all of us”; Well, it doesn’t. Sure, a lot of people FEEL that they’re targeted, but they’re just paranoid. I’m the real deal. Back in college, I used to carry an umbrella everyday… at a time when an umbrella was one of the most uncool thing you could carry, followed by glasses. And it used to rain EVERY SINGLE day i forgot to take the umbrella. Lest you think I am just being paranoid, there was an incident when I walked out of my building umbrella-less, enjoying the sunshine… Five minutes into my walk, it started pouring. I ran back into the building, and took my umbrella. The rain stopped. I repacked my umbrella and put it back into my bag, and presto… it started again. So, no. I can’t accept these things as coincidences. The Rain God was out to get me.

I decided to read up on the chap. It is important to know one’s enemy, as some great man once said (SOMEONE must have said it… It sounds cool enough). The chap turned out to be quite elusive. He was poorly documented. The earliest mention of a Rain God was in the Mayan civilization. The guy was called Chaac. I decided to ignore this. Hey, it’s not cool to wage wars against people called Chaacs… Besides, he looked like this!! The guy has enough problems without me writing blogs about him. Then I stumbled on good old Zeus. I always knew he was a kingpin among the Gods. But what I didn’t know was that he was in charge of the sky, rain, lightning and thunder.

To be fair, he hadn’t been fighting with me after my stint in college. Maybe he just didn’t like me doing my MBA. But the hiatus has apparently been withdrawn… Last night, as a part of the reduce-the-Hammy-blubber movement, I decided to walk back from work. I was about ten minutes away from home when ol’ Zeus decided to throw the sucker punch. It was a mild, but sneaky attack. A sudden burst of rain. And he timed the attack perfectly. I had a stretch of road with no cover in sight… I had to run a kilometer before I reached a small grocery store which was already more or less full with other refugees from the rain…

The fight had begun.

The sudden rain was a shrewd and well timed move, I’ll give him that. Despite the sudden offset of rain, I managed to find some sort of shelter in the grocery store. So we were more or less even at that point…

But I wasn’t quick enough. I was pretty much wet all over. But my major concern was my laptop. I had it on my back, and so far, I was able to keep it dry. So I was feeling pretty good at that point. I smirked.

He probably saw the smirk. You know how ol’ Zeus can get mad over smirks… He decided to up the ante. The rain turned into a storm. Thunder and lightning riddled the sky. Stupidly , I felt safe under the thin tarpaulin sheet hanging over the grocery store. While the other masses crowded further to the back of the store, I exhibited an ill placed bravado and stood right in front, calmly ignoring the raging tempest before me.

Of course Zeuse boy wasn’t impressed. He started blowing his trumpet loud and mighty. He sent lightning bolts out nearby, breaking branches off trees. One couple was rushing into the grocery store and almost got their head caved in by a falling branch. The road was flooded with a river of dirty mud-water. I shook my fist in the sky, saying “Bring it on, buster.” My co-refugees from the rain moved in closer… I’m not sure whether they were moving away from the rain or away from the madman shaking his fist at the sky.

It started getting cold now. I wasn’t frayed. I like the cold. And I felt safe under the guidance of Science, which promised me that rain falls straight down, and that as long as the roof over my head did not collapse, I’d do ok.

And then whoosh!! The wind got really strong. So strong that it was almost traveling horizontally. Mayday!! A direct attack to the chest. Science had forsaken me. The cold intensified. My right hand got rigid. It was difficult to move my fingers. Over the sound of crackling thunder, I could hear Zeus laughing.

I wasn’t willing to let it go. If there’s one thing my friends know about a Hammy, it is that he tends to be stubborn. I started waving my arms up and down to get the blood-flow working. I started rubbing my hands together like a villain from the cheesy old Batman TV series. And I fought the cold as I said “Is that all you got, buddy?” The crowd started getting agitated. Some people started moving away from the shelter, reasoning that they were better off at the mercy of nature than sharing a roof with a hand-rubbing, smirking, shivering lunatic who had started mumbling rubbish…

So I wasn’t winning any popularity contest, but I had Zeus by the beard and by Thor, I wasn’t letting go…

By this time, Zeus was pretty pissed off. He sent what I can only guess were a bunch of his cronies in a big jeep with specific instructions to splash me with the water flooding the road. They did their job. They rode right in front of me, splashing me with the water from the road. And they didn’t even stop to look. They were obviously drunk with power granted by a higher authority… Zeus. And it was specifically aimed at me. I was the only one who got splashed all over. Maybe it was because the rest of the refugees were huddled together away from me, but I’d like to believe it was all part of Zeus’ master plan.

But I wasn’t impressed. It would have been demoralizing if this had happened five minutes abo, when I still had some dry patches on my person. But as it stood, I was already drenched without an inch to spare. All I did was shake my head and laugh at how futile mighty Zeus was being.

At about this point, some of my co-refugees were already calling the paramedics to report the laughing crackpot. But I didn’t care. I was winning. And HOW!! Zeus huffed and puffed, but decided he couldn’t rely on fairy tales to win the match…

Just when I thought things were turning ok, Zeus got into one of his blitzkreig moods. The rain intensified… and he sent over a hailstorm! I was suddenly pelted with a load of hailstones. It hit me on my chest, legs and arms, and it stung like crazy. I even got one right smack in the middle of my right cheek. I’m sure some people might have expected me to turn the other cheek, but I preferred to wave out my arms in unconditional surrender.

The scoreboard was going haywire. Zeus was scoring left right and center. He was basking in the limelight. He pelted me with a few more hailstones, wiped his hand, smiled at his victory, and walked off…

He wasn’t done with that, the vindictive son of a deity. He also took out the power supply, strategically putting me in a dark inactive void for the rest of the night. The battle was over. I limped back to my place, defeated.

I learned my lesson. And I think it’s time for you to learn the moral of the story. Never, and I mean NEVER… start fights with Gods. They kinda have an upper hand. The battle just won’t be fair.

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