Rain

She wondered why when she grew up she never let the rain seep through her existence. She remembered herself as a child…. just a whiff of the rain and she would delightfully rush out …and hesitantly put her hand out of the window. She loved the shiver of the wet drops.

She remembered her early teens, which saw her perched by the window…all complete with her pen and diary just to capture the dreams that the rains stirred in her. There was nothing as sensuous as the first raindrops. The beauty of the experience lied in the anticipation that the rain awakened. She waited… She waited for someone who could discover the vast continent within her…who could unclose her…. The hurt inside she could not justify. She just shied away from human affection…but she waited for someone to come along who would grow that loving space within her. She believed that love was like the rains that opened up purple jacarandas along the highway…. She knew when it rained…. love would feel like this…Love would be like the moist earth that weaved chiffon of dew after the rain.

But many passions burnt and died. The raindrops started burning her skin …Gradually the rain stopped being beautiful to her. It didn’t comfort her any more…something went dead in her. She stopped tracing patterns in the evening clouds. A surprise shower was uncomfortable for her.

He did come along then…he soothed the past creases in her soul with just his glance and his smile. He spread like the sky. She gazed up in his blueness…. the clouds wept her tears and she was drenched by the rain. She was seeking warmth in his passion. She reconnected with the rains. Earlier she was a passive observer. Now she learnt to dance in the rains. With him she was like the roots of a tree buried in the cold heart of the earth…with familiar soil enclosing her and the wet caress of the rain.

He vanished like the dust of a storm…. she wondered if it was a mirage that disappeared. The monsoons had ceased. She waited….

It is strange that all memories have one quality…they are completely calm .It was the alarm of their silence that forced her to lay hold of her sleeve and close her eyes and let the tears flow. This stillness is the reason why the memories don’t awaken desire so much as a vast sorrow. Once she had such desires but they are past and they belong to another world…that is gone from her now. They are powerful remembrances that come from within her and also mysterious unattainable reflections that haunt her. If these scenes were given back to her she wondered if she would be able to regain the old intimacy with them. She could pass these scenes like a traveler…

But he had really traveled far into her …had crossed boundaries that enclosed her.

She waited …smelt the scent of the rain in the air…she looked back..he wasn’t there. But it did rain again.

There was no way he could leave her now…he would be here in the rain, in the thinking, in the longing, in the suffering, merging in the million drops which would know no bodies., only this mystic mutuality.
She didn’t need his presence to let the rains fill her senses.