Skip to main content

Rain Like Home

It's raining like it does at home. The sky ripped by lightning and angry thunder bolts. The rain falls in a constant slant of water, a sheet of diaphanous grey. A man sits in his white pickup on the parking lot, headlights and wipers turned on, watching the rain. Other than him and us no one else sees nature in her feral splendor.

I remember monsoons from years ago, rain falling down a flowering jasmine vine, crows getting drenched on the clothesline, Sal leaves glistening brilliant emerald, water coursing in harried rivulets down its gnarled trunk. The smell of tea as Ma pours it out of the pot into delicate bone-china cups. I am of age. We are now friends who can sit together and talk for hours over a cup of tea.

Other memories come from thoughts of tea and rain - their intimate mix. A and I sitting in our living room. The sky is dark and it's pouring outside. I ask him "Can I get you some tea ?" He smiles "No, that would mean five minutes less of your company. I would rather have five more minutes than a cup of tea " Five minutes in three hours count. They remain precious to this day.

R asks me "Which is your favorite season ?" I say "Monsoon" He asks "Why ?" I say "I don't know. Falling rain moves me deeply" He says seriously "You know, I will feel different about rain. Anything you love turns special to me" I laugh. Maybe it rains today where he is and he remembers what he once said to me.

P and I are sharing his umbrella as we walk down the park in rain. Our shoulders brush sending a thrill down to the pit of my stomach like it has suddenly been hollowed. I feel depleted of words for as long as it takes for that sensation to fade. He is quiet too. I realize years later how special and unique that was and how unlike anything I have felt in my older years
.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...