Monsoon clouds

This is the article I circulated among the internal group formed during the last meeting. I welcome your feedback on this.

I believe that these clouds live somewhere beyond those distant hills in the east. For they always rise from beyond those hills. They are big, black, and unsightly; yet there is something lovable about them. Every time they meet me, they talk to me the same way they had, when they met me for the first time—as far as I can remember, when I was hardly six years old.

Like always, when they are about to arrive, the winds rage through the fields in ecstatic frenzy, the skies shine with an unearthly glimmer, the trees sway as if possessed by the evil spirits in the tales the old maid used to tell me on dark nights as I would sit beside her in the dank, smoky kitchen. They were so real and scary that even the sudden crumbling of the firewood in the hearth or the flutter of the shadows on the wall would make me start as I sat listening to her tales. It makes me guilty that I no longer believe that those spirits exist…have I grown up so much that I now doubt the veracity of that old story teller? Do I remember which the last story was that she told me? I never remember having bidden her any goodbye. Yet, she has left my horizon quietly, unannounced and vanished beyond some hills like these clouds do, at the end of the monsoon. Perhaps, she dwells even today somewhere beyond these very hills? Here, my mind suddenly breaks off and runs across the fields. I just let it. I know it never had enough of her tales told in that dark, smoky kitchen.

The streaks of lightning still have the splendid sheen of yesteryears. The thunders still roar as loudly and suddenly as ever. Yet, I wish they could make me shudder like they used to; that I hadn’t become as hardened to shocks as I have.

I do not remember when was the last time I sat on the steps of my childhood home apprehensively staring at the darkening sky….and praying that it would not rain until grandpa was back home. Those gates had closed behind me for the last time long ago. They might have closed so casually that I never even though it would be the last time. Yet, my mind just needs to draw a magic curtain for me to be there again. Sitting on the steps of those gates again…and staring at the dark skies… a lonely, worried little boy waiting for his grandpa to return from the market. Today, as I wait, I know that grandpa will never return. He has left. He has gone to a place from where no one returns…no God has been kind enough to have granted anyone a return from there. Yet it feels good to fantasize…that he will return, walking through the fields, and that I will recognize him from afar, and that then, an abrupt wave of relief will wash away all my fears. There is a strange feeling of happiness in waiting for someone you know will never return.

Whatever shape they might assume, I know these clouds—each one of them. And that is why I let them rain on me. Let them cleanse me of all the dust and the dirt that has gathered on me over the months…cleanse me of all the guilt, of all the sorrows, of all the frustrations, of all the doubts, of all the fears, of all the thirst, of all the hunger, of all the want, of all the desires,…that burden me. They drench me, they thrill me, they pour all over me—yet they never wake me up from my own treasured dreams or break my solitary penance.

V K Rajan