A muse

It rained after a long time yesterday night in Mysore and I missed it. I was fast asleep and woke up to find the earth cool and oozing a beautiful scent. I love to see the roads after rain in the mornings. There is no word in English which adequately describes the serene beauty of the wet leaves and bent trees which look so happy that they seem like a fair maiden who has just returned from visiting her lover - shy and yet knowing, lost in memories and oblivious to surroundings. The empty roads look untrodden and we seem to be trespassing.
Walking alone, I get the same feeling I used to get when I lay on the very huge rock near my grandma's home. Looking up at the sky, I could see only the sky everywhere and got lost for hours, imagining myself to be alone in the whole world. The world down looked tiny, the compound walls looked like faraway territorial boundary of a castle and the setting of the sun, like the sun setting on an empire.
Sometimes knowledge stands in the way of enjoying beauty. It happens to me when I remember that the earthy scent we all love so much is just an odor emanating from a bacteria Actinomycetes and it is a chemical known as Geosmin. It sure is a damper for many people who harbour quite romantic notions about the smell. Anyway, all I wanted to say was that I missed it by sleeping through it all yesterday.