Skip to main content

Rain


I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard someone cry. Thinking I myself was weeping, I felt my face and it was dry.


Ray Bradbury’s words came to me as the rain battered my window last night.  I had taken the picture of the clouds in the evening while I waited at the bus stop for someone to arrive.  Rain is nothing new in Kerala where I have found my current shelter.  From the time I came here four months ago, it has been raining almost every day for some time at least. 

There was a time when the rain was romantic for me.  The rain has a music that enters your very being and pervades it like an exquisite flavour.  While in Delhi, I used to long for the rain. To drench the desert of Delhi with heavenly flavours.  To quench the thirst that runs through Delhi’s veins like a paranoid monster.  To soften the fossilised souls of the deities that grab Delhi square foot by square foot.  To wash clean the insensate idols that encroach upon the rights of people who are like the flowers buffeted down by forces stronger than feeble goodness. 

Now the rain has lost its romance for me.  I can only hear cries when it rains.  The heavens roar thunderously here in God’s own country. 

Wherever you go, there’s no escape from the gods.  That’s one of the few certainties we have in life.  They come, grabbing, snarling, licking the window panes, sucking, sucking your blood. 

I make sure that the window is bolted and go to bed.  I feel my face to make sure it is dry.  I fumble about for the dripping sleep and listen to the ceaseless roar outside.  How did my romance mutate into a monster?

That’s life, whispered the angel of sleep.  Let me put you to sleep, it said. 

I waited for sleep.  The sweetness of blissful sleep. 
Indian Bloggers


Comments

  1. IndraniDecember 3, 2015 at 8:23 AM

    Amazing write up on rains and tears.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 3, 2015 at 7:48 PM

      One good thing about the rain is that it conceals your tears: washes them away :)

      Delete
  2. Ravish ManiDecember 3, 2015 at 10:09 AM

    A deep sense of melancholy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 3, 2015 at 7:50 PM

      Whereas rains used to excite me earlier. But excitements have their lifespan too, I guess. Perhaps, religion is all about losing excitements and becoming sober. And religion played a lot of games with my life...

      Delete
  3. Titas BiswasDecember 3, 2015 at 11:28 AM

    Yeess,there was a time.Now,the schedule is always so tight that I can't feel what rain is! It is now,as all things are,just happening around,with me having nothing to do with it.And Gods.I agree about your verdict on Gods.Monstrous and insane.After all,they are bourne of the human head,one of the most disastrous side of it,may be.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 3, 2015 at 7:51 PM

      Disasters, indeed, they are! And we think disasters are their punishments for our sins!

      Delete
  4. Amit AgarwalDecember 3, 2015 at 12:20 PM

    "Wherever you go, there’s no escape from the gods. That’s one of the few certainties we have in life. They come, grabbing, snarling, licking the window panes, sucking, sucking your blood..." Amazing! Brilliant!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 3, 2015 at 7:53 PM

      The best period in my life was a Jupiter year that I spent without any religious people around. And then came a new management which brought in the bulldozers literally. The whole lot of them were bulldozers metaphorically too. They rule the world. And they believe they are right and righteous....

      Delete
  5. Saru SinghalDecember 4, 2015 at 1:07 AM

    Even few drops of rain are always welcome in Delhi. You are right about Kerala. I guess excess of everything is bad. Love the poetic touch to this post. Rain and tears have a strange romantic connection.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 4, 2015 at 6:13 AM

      Rain and ecstasy too have a romantic connection, Saru. :)

      Delete
  6. Purba chakrabortyDecember 4, 2015 at 1:39 AM

    A great write up. Enjoyed reading it :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Datta GhoshDecember 4, 2015 at 1:18 PM

    This is one sentiment that I can precisely understand. Growing up in Madhya Pradesh, Bundelkhand especially rain was a welcome song that my parched eyes welcomed. Now, that I am in Bengal, rain has lost the romance for me. Beautiful write up as always. exceptional comparision

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 4, 2015 at 5:34 PM

      It's more about a mutation than the comparison. Kerala is used to rains and no amount can be an excess here really. In fact, according meteorologists, the rains have shifted from Kerala to Tamil Nadu partly at least. The Tamils who were clamouring for more and more water from the Mullaperiyar dam may have their thirst quenched now: they are praying for reprieve from the rain!

      Life is such! And the post is about that - not about Tamil Nadu but about life and what it did to me personally in some ways...

      Delete
  8. sunaina sharmaDecember 4, 2015 at 8:44 PM

    How beautiful....As I read this yesterday (I couldn't post my comment then), I was feeling the wetness o my cheeks although I didn't cry...It was as if you sent the rain here to me through your words, and with rain came the pain and the cries, the source of which I didn't know. But I have often felt it too. As my kids enjoy the rain, I sometimes have felt a throbbing inside. That throbbing tells me that there is something left vacant inside and that emptiness brings pain. And then there are times when I want to look up in the sky, close my eyes, and let the downpour drench me completely, as if in a cleansing way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 4, 2015 at 9:20 PM

      Your comment is more poetic than my post, Sunaina. Face turned to the sky, eyes closed, being washed by the poem of the heavens... Yes, that's how the rain should act on us. If it doesn't some cleansing is called for. But repeated failures can make us immune to further cleansing. Even the rain becomes a monster.

      Delete
  9. Alok singhalDecember 4, 2015 at 8:49 PM

    Now I am all afraid of rains...chennai chapter! I hate it when it pours incessantly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 4, 2015 at 9:22 PM

      Cataclysmic changes in climate patterns can be expected because of what we've done to the planet.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...
11 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...
10 comments
Read more