Moody Monsoon: When Rain Doesn't Heal The Pain

2022-07-15 20:57:19 By : Ms. Kathy Lee

Rains give life. But not even the most tenacious lives are the same. And they all begin from fragility. Our bodies, delicate as eggs, are stepped over by life, leaving their mark in pain.

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It is a scorching May in Delhi. The air is hot and gritty, a napping dragon’s exhal­a­tions. Our bodies have become sweat machines. The leaves of the gulmohar have charred at the edges, flowers flaking like cigarette paper in our palms. Suddenly, the sky turns into a chameleon, camouflaging from blue to brown to black, gobbling up the fireball of a sun. A tepid rain soon follows. The soft rum­ble of rain turns into a sudden pounding—or, perhaps, as Salinger said, falling in buckets…like a bastard. I am stranded in the library, feeling the city pulse with a sudden relief and vigour—skidding bikes, rushing cars, a bunch of people darting towards the shaded chai-tapri.

In the park overlooking the library, I see the straight march of rain bending the spines of grass. The flailing branches of thick-limbed, perennial trees crack with a distinct snap with each mad swirl of the wind. I look at the saucer­-shaped nest ensconced on one such branch, the two bluish-grey eggs, the size of cherry tomatoes, tumbling in it. There is life in those small eggs, a strange realisation strikes me. How can life—so robust and tenacious that it would dare to fly in the vast expanse of the sky very soon—begin from such fragility?

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