So as soon as I had challenged the rain gods to put up a better show, the rain gods decided to teach me in the best possible way...

So it was Sunday morning .... it was beautiful outside with the cool breeze hinting of an early autumn... and I was like "I need to expore the city in this beautiful weather"...and I looked at the umbrella and said "nah. I can handle the rains here"....

So I wore an elegant flowy white summer dress and took the metro to the embassy row ... embassy row is akin to our Chankya Puri in Delhi where all the embassies are housed ...... so one of the first embassies I spotted was the Indian embassy with a huge statute of Gandhi in front ... and for independence day (August 15) it was awfully quiet at the Indian embassy - have to say Indian embassies everywhere have best buildings.... and soon it was time to spot the Indonesian embassy which had a fantastic and artistic building with nice green tiles and cream coloured walls... and I walked past the embassies of Korea, Chad, Luxembourg, Bulgaria etc. and the final building which was the artistic building of the Islamic centre with its beautiful minarets and Persian writing in the heart of DC...

and thats when the rain gods decided to smile, nay laugh, at me ... sure enough it started as a drizzle... and I walked confidently thinking to myself - ha, this is rain? Let them come to India and see the monsoons!... and almost on cue, the rain intensified and soon it was a mini monsoon... even then my arrogance knew no bounds and I took refuge under a tree outside the Thai embassy.... and waited impatiently for the poor show of rain to stop... well as you already guessed it didnt.... and before long I realised that I am soon in danger of looking like Mandakani in a drenched white dress in the middle of the most international street of Washington -not the best thing to happen on Indian independence day....

I soon took refuge in the embassy of Cote d'Ivoire... and stayed outside the doors for close to 1 hour... .all the while trying to placate the rain gods for my presumptous behaviour ....... suffice to say I had to hop from one country to another to escape the unforgiving rain .... so I hopped from the embassy of Cote d'Ivoire to the embassy of South Korea and then to the embassy of Greece, and then finally to the embassy of Indonesia where I found a cab and dived in....

Note to myself - if I become the PM, make good will visits to these countries....