Making peace with South-Indian rains

It is 4 p.m. in the evening, but the rain makes it look like it’s 7. The winds are just bringing the rain, rustling up the trees. I recite Rilke to myself “The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up, as if orchards were dying high in space…”. There is a small portico at the tea shop, but no one wants to be out. Everyone knows how vicious multi-directional rains can be in Bangalore. There is no warning before it begins — no drizzle. Just the rain.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with the rain. When I was a kid, it meant standing out with an umbrella under my Mom’s supervision, trying to get a little wet. Then there was this monsoon which brought the entire house down with chikungunya. And yet another monsoon, which, when it finally ended, took with it two loved ones. By the first time I finally got completely drenched, I was 19.

You know how the brain has this trick of randomly bringing up things you didn’t remember existed there in the first place? I am reminded of something I had read about Rabia, a Sufi mystic poet. She said -

“I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that no one worships God
for fear of hell or temptation of heaven.”

It is not hard to believe in a God who can paint the city with rain. In my quaint little tea shop, for the first time in a long time, I feel at peace with the rain. With the metal sheeted rooftop thundering with rain drops so loud that one can barely hear oneself, even the usual conversationalists are left with empty speech balloons, hanging thickly over the air.

The rain roars on for a mighty hour, thundering, cackling. The transformer sputters in the lane, we watch it from the first floor portico, the electricity goes off. The shop is lit with candles. There is something about the rain that makes tea addicts out of everyone. A flurry of orders and a mad rush, that almost seems noiseless over the sound of rain, begins. The smokers stand near the door with wide eyes and puckered lips. In the misty air, they look like they are trying to empty the oxygen from their lungs but it refuses to dissipate in the atmosphere. It clings above all our heads like halos. Again I think of Rabia’s words.

Maybe we are lighting fires within ourselves, and putting them out, trying to love the Gods in ourselves. I know I am.

First published on Wordpress at Meera Govindan.