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 Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 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...
19 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
14 comments
Read more