Iffy Rain
When I was in my early twenties, most of my blog posts were about rain. I was/am inordinately in love with it. I wrote about it falling in torrents, about the green of leaves showing up vividly against the dark clouds, and of the hills that ringed my city. These are things of the past. I haven’t lived in a hilly place since Falmer: the South Downs are much gentler than the Eastern Ghats, granted, but then the chalk cliffs rise over the sea to take your breath away. I miss the walks of England, where we went to our “secret pond”, damp leaves squelching underfoot, or into enchanted forests that opened onto the loveliest countryside. Both greenery and rains are now a figment of my imagination. I play out scenes in my head day in, day out. I put myself in a room like Virginia Woolf’s, garden and bookcases all around. I read horror. Life is at once too prosaic and too eerie.
I started writing this in a fit of enthusiasm when the rain started a while ago. I had no idea where it would go, but I hoped the rain would lead me. I should have learnt my lesson, but no. Now I keep looking up at the streetlight so much that my eyes hurt. It doesn’t help. That promising streak is most often an insect drawn to the light. In the morning, if I’m lucky, I might wake up envying the wires outside my window, beads of rain hanging from them and squirrels scampering above. All outdoors, free, and in communion.
I have a few go-to songs for when it rains. How softly Trois Gymnopédies steals into your head and tantalisingly evokes a place that you’ll never know! (To be fair, this is my go-to piece for various occasions.) A Rainy Night in Georgia invites you to step into an Edward Hopper painting — wrapped in your thoughts, you sit at a restaurant window and nurse a cup of hot chocolate, even as the rain splatters against the window and the drops chase one another down the glass. Rain is for longing, for music that brings you the mountains.
But in Chennai, the rain is always in two minds. The clouds rumble and threaten for days before they deign to open up. And when the rain finally arrives, it is before dawn, when you’re lost to the world and the monsters of school exams chase you in horrid dreams, where the invigilator is handing you the question paper and you don’t know a thing; failure is certain. So you grit your teeth and wake to another day of crushing humidity. When dry leaves rattle on the asphalt, in a sudden blast of wind, you drop whatever you are doing, deceived into thinking that the rain is finally here. Disappointment hangs heavy in the street, in the slow fans that cut the thick air and the languor of the animals that curl up in thin slivers of shade.
Up on the terrace, I saw a shooting star a couple of nights ago. At least, I think it was one; it swept by before I could figure out what it was. That same night, a cloud train arranged itself around a star to make it look like a comet. The moon rested in the centre of an iridescent circle. Clear skies flecked by thin, patterned clouds, like fabric. These wisps will float away and band themselves over some unsuspecting inland town, I thought, where nobody yearns or cares for them. They’ll spend themselves in a matter of a few minutes and return wearily to the sea in the most unglamorous fashion.
Then the rain fell at midnight, a neon-lit downpour, and we were acquainted again. Shy, penitent, arms outstretched. It only sneaks in, showing itself but briefly, and will play truant again. You know those North Indian love songs that poets composed for the monsoon? I’m almost certain they were written as much for the rain as for the lover. And it will return at some point, wheedling, cajoling and roaring, as if it never left. Until then, books and music will come to the rescue.
