An Outpouring of Muddled Feelings

Before you read this, take a moment. Think about the first thought or memory that comes to your mind when someone says rain. Close your eyes if you have to. But let your mind wander down that watery road for a while. What does the rain remind you of? What images flash in front of your eyes? Do you hear the deafening roar of thunder cutting through the sound of the skies pouring? Or do you feel the dozen tiny drizzle drops settling themselves on your skin in the mild midday sun? Maybe you see trees shaking and wind howling with the force of a cyclone on its warpath. Or maybe you remember chilly evenings, huddled in sweaters and hot drinks. Have you ever danced in the rain? Or waded knee-deep in puddles leftover from heavy showers? Maybe you prayed for the clouds to give way so you wouldn’t have to go to school that day. Or maybe you prayed for safety and respite when it seemed like heavenly fury was lashing down on the world.

I used to think there were two kinds of people in the world- the ones who loved rain and the ones who hated it. Everything that we read, watched and listened to seemed to suggest so. I mooned over melancholy English poems that lamented rain and all its dark gloom and horrid chill. I danced along to the romantic Tamil songs that crooned confessions of love against the patter of a thousand raindrops playing in the background. The bookworm in me recalls all the novels of my childhood where the young protagonists would pray for sunny days. And yet sometimes I find myself looking at the sky remembering the words to the actual prayers for rain that we used to sing in school assemblies. Perhaps, in some way, we have all grown up in this strange dichotomy of views.

But all that changed for me in December of 2015. When the city that I had once thought unshakeable was brought to its knees as water flooded entire neighbourhoods and seeped into homes in one swift, fluid coup. I had once been the girl who would make excuses to run out in the rain, for the thrill of feeling the rare, cold Chennai air, my socks beginning to feel squishy inside my shoes, water drops finding their way on my nose, arms, neck, eyelids while I vainly tried to catch them in my hands. But in that year, another girl also grew inside me. The one who came to learn of exactly what those drops were capable of, how fierce those dark clouds could be, the lives it could steal and the land it could wreck and lay waste to.

My grandmother once told me that in our culture, rain is a blessing from the gods. And then, in Tamil, she would tell me that even too much of a curse could be endured but never too much of a blessing. In retrospect, my grandmother’s foreshadowing skills were scarily accurate. But now, as I think of those words, I begin to realise how foolish it is to see rain as something to either love or hate; how much of a belittling oversimplification it is to think of it as a good thing or a bad thing. I have come to accept the complexity of its nature, just as I accept the complexity of my feelings towards it. Because now lives in me a girl who wants to rejoice at the rain and a girl who has come to be wary of it. And I will find myself standing under open skies when the wetness comes down, I will learn to dance in its torrents again- a little scared and a little happy.

Hima Mouli

19/UELA/040