RAIN

She got up from her writing desk to clear away the plate, full of crumbs and a smudge of sauce. On her way to the kitchen sink, she switched on the water kettle, waiting for the noise of a heated coil. She placed the plate on the sink and looked over to the open mouth of the sauce bottle—the sharp acidic smell of chilli garlic sauce. She flipped the cap shut and immersed her hands in tap water and soap. She rubbed the sponge in circles on the white surface, cold, wet, slippery, smooth and thought about her grocery list. Suddenly the rain outside gets stronger and their muffled noise rises. She looks outside and is disappointed to see it drizzling still. She makes her tea and stands by her window, with one hand at her hip. Rain. Incessant, rootless rain. Each hour, each day, melting away in rain. She loves it when it rains. She measures the episodes of her life with the feelings that the rain in that city evoked in her. She stood there watching the rain, together with the open Tupperware containers full of frozen foods, together, spinning out of the little kitchen, thinking of all the different kinds of rains she has been in. The most beautiful rain she has ever seen has been in Dhaka, during the August-September monsoons. The rain is lusty and comes ripping out from the sky in furious anger. It is like listening to a man’s recorded voice, a heavy voice full of regret and confessions. Just his voice, breaking the field of perfect silence, disturbing, hypnotic, incomprehensible and yet clear in it’s pain and intent. She would lie in her bed and look at the rain outside her window in Dhaka, watching each drop fall against the window pane and trickle down in streaks, creating little rivers from little tears. There was sadness in that rain, but not the kind that makes you forget it. Now, Bangkok rain, now that was forgettable. It was sticky, dirty sulphurous rain. She never looked for that kind of rain. Then there is rain that feeds your soul. Little by little, the kind of rain that claims you, the kind of rain that comes looking for you. This kind of rain has it’s presents only for those who recognise it in it’s middle. This kind of rain happens in Rajasthan, in the dessert. It was the strangest kind of rain she had ever seen. It wasn’t rhythmic, simple, transparent, soft, light and slender. It was harsh, transient and essential. It would come suddenly upon the dry yellow sand of the desert, wetting the trees and the footpaths, but never the sands. It would rattle the little fruits from the trees, rattling little boats in small gullies. Sometimes it would rain for days – long and mad – each drop full of sweetness, each drop not extinguishing but duelling with the hot thirsty sand. This rain amazed her. It was her first time away from home and the first day she was there, it rained, quite unexpectedly. It was an unearthly welcome song from nature. And every time it rained after that, she would look up and see the naked force of rain, a different face from the comforting friend she had left behind in the monsoons of Dhaka. The rain wouldn’t comfort her, but it would let her soul know that somehow the night, wind, the moon, the rain have all spun out of their due course and that there was no great mystery to it. It was god’s plan, god’s design. It didn’t calm her, but it gave her strength. Sometimes she thought of a rain that she only saw once, against the hills of Dehradun, with her mother. She had noticed how green and alive the hills were looking. But soon her attention went elsewhere. The hotel clerk’s typewriter was jangling away in time with the rain, sometimes drawing a pause as the he fiddled with the carbon sheets. To her ears, it was a tango for two, the clerk’s typing turned into a Milonguero, leading the noise of the rain into a turn, a hook, a break, a sweep. Notes nestled within notes. The music of the rain that she had never noticed before. She pulled her mother close to her and they both stood on the veranda, watching it rain, as the hot chocolate in their thermos ran out. She put her teacup down, it had gone cold, she hadn’t noticed. She thought of putting on the kettle again, as she looked down at the sad drowning teabag in her cup. Suddenly she remembered it raining the day her grandfather died in a London hospital. She had rushed to the hospital, after negotiating pedestrian traffic on a day when the world was battling the gusty wind and rain on Waterloo Bridge. But it was too late that day. The rain had frozen in her hands when she heard the news of his passing. It was as if on that day, the rain had claimed her. She stood there with her hair in wet little tails, her trousers wet, from the thighs down, her socks, drowned long before. She cried with her family around her. Hours later, she stood outside with her brother as he lit up a cigarette, huddled under a thin awning. His cigarette smoke melted in with her hot breath. Steam and smoke and florescent lighting, mixed together that late night, her grandfather had passed away, and it was still raining in London. It wasn’t heavy or angry or sad or dirty or beautiful. It was just persistent and made one tired. It caught one in its nets and drew one down. It felt like cold fish scales. It looked like that too. She often wondered about moving someplace where it was warmer, some place where the rain was warm, beautiful, wild. She missed the rain that she loved. She missed the rain that was from her happier days, the rain that was hers.