Lakhapar, Rajkot, Gujarat

How's the rain in Ahmedabad?" The pride in Mehrambhai Limbabhai's clear voice is unmistakable. The gloating subtext: "Unlike you people, we are the blessed ones, we had plenty of rain." In his lush green groundnut field, children dance in a downpour. In Lakhapur, one of the hundreds of villages in perennially drought-prone Saurashtra, which didn't see water for three years except when it oozed out of the tap of a tanker.

The barren brown countryside has suddenly become grassy green, dotted with ponds. Medium and large dams in the area are getting flush with water. Lakhapar's is the story of almost all the seven Saurashtra districts where it's raining like never before. All around you, tired weather-beaten faces break into bright laughter. People talk about rain all the time. "Our village of 1,800 was totally dependent on water tankers, for groundwater levels had gone down. They would arrive twice a day and not very regularly," says Ramesh Bachubhai, Lakhapar's deputy sarpanch. "If it continues to rain like this, we're saved this year," he says.

But nobody seems to have any doubt that it will continue to rain well. The confidence seems to emerge from a faith that Nature couldn't be harsher on the villagers. "I don't even remember when it rained last," shrugs a smiling Ramjibhai Limbabhai.

As he speaks, you can see a herd of cows and buffaloes with their proud owner Sureshbhai Govindbhai, heading for the overflowing village pond. But they just touch their mouths to the water; most of them don't drink. "They had so much water while grazing in the fields that they don't need anything from the pond. They had their fill," grins Sureshbhai. Earlier, even the village pond was dry. Today, there is water everywhere, and there is plenty to drink, bathe for hours and for just anything.

"My buffaloes just won't come out of the ponds. I have to shout and scream to get them out and follow me. This is for the first time in three to four years that I have brought my cattle to graze and bathe here. Till now, they had to travel 8-10 km in search of food," Guberbhai Sotabhai says all of this in one breath, and just won't stop talking. Why should he?