'Running in the Rain'

Glad I got your letter, it's just like part of you:
With the blunt language, but hey, we stay so true -
When everything around me pulls me down,
yeah, everything around me just brings me down so hard:
No angels to carry me..

We used to run in the rain, soak up our shoes;
Used to talk about life and anything we'd choose
And I'll laugh at you, and you'll laugh at me -
We won't feel the blues..

Sunken little sweethearts and torn up failed exams,
Papers with our soul's art, and us growing up as men
And would you want to trade it all?; would you want to change all your faults?
The wishing never stops..

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Wrote that one the back of an envelope. It (the envelope, along with the letter of course) was from my best friend.

Probably one of the most linear things I've ever done, which goes, uhm, 'decently' well with music. I was very much into Bruce Springsteen's 'Ghost of Tom Joad' album at the time, and ocassionally, when our (mum's actually) old television set decided to jump to some 'vacant' channel (read: white noise & fyi: old tv set, older technology), I'd play around with a kapok guitar which my friend's dad gave me. It was my first guitar. With huge fretboards and loose machine heads.

I think I was 16 then. It was a year after my best friend had left Taiping to relocate, as his dad held some important post with Telekom (Kuala Lumpur: I would not be there until I was 20), and probably out of boredom (at the time, I would accredit this, solely to boredom; who ever heard of a melancholic 16 year old Taiping boy anyway?): my thoughts took me back to the places where I was, a year earlier. Running. Being mischievous. Waking up to the world. Drawing. Telling our stories (We had this joint 'comic book' called 'Mindscapes', where we took turns to tell / illustrate stories back to back, in solo fashion, i might still have it, if it hasn't been 'silverfished' already). Reading (Fantasy).

I briefly recalled that on one of our outdoor trips to Maxwell Hill [a.k.a. Bukit Larut a.k.a. the Dampest place in Malaysia, coincidentally Taiping is also known as Raintown, henceforth my (narcissistic) imaginary record label: 'Raintown Records'], on the subject of getting a map of Taiping from an office located somewhere on the hill (it was a Geography project: see the great lengths we'd gone through to please our teachers and parents), we took the road up - by foot.

After some great walking (great = long, not 'great' as in 'good'), we decided to ask the next person who would cross our path, for the whereabouts of the said office. Sure enough, some elderly dude passed us. We asked our question. And as it turns out: the office was actually at the foot of the hill. We were already about 15 to 20 minutes up, on that thing.

Then it started to rain.

Being the boys that we were (oblivious to or maybe, just maybe: desperate for danger), we started to run down on that hill. Now this isn't an advised thing to do, on Maxwell Hill (a.k.a. see above) as 1) Going downwards is much, much faster on a hill, 2) Rain makes the road slippery and 3) Ocassionally jeeps travel along that hill road. But we did it anyway. God saw two stupid fools and pitied them I guess.

We were cheering and shouting all the way down. Adrenaline makes you do crazy things. Even when we were on the way, with the running and all, we were exchanging comments, opinions and making conversation through our gasps and breathe. He had earlier told me that once, during his tae-kwon-do class, they were made to run the whole length (a few times - i can't remember the exact number) of our school field, shouting, 'Lari lari kita lari, pergi mana? - pergi lari' (talk about torture). So we took that as our battle cry. All the way down, till we were tired, and too exhausted to audibly make fools of ourselves.

His mum had to cover the car seats with newspapers as we were drenched, cold and shivering. We went back for the map two days later. I think we got an 'A' for the project. But then again, so did everyone else.

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We corresponded for a while, me and my best friend, after he had left Taiping. Till one day we sort of did what everyone else did: we lost touch, we changed, and our lives were never the same way it was when we were just two crazy souls, running down from that hill, in the rain.

(" , )

For Sunil, wherever your life has taken you: 'All da best, man.'