It’s late, but I can hear the clouds rumble. I will wake up to the rain tomorrow, I tell myself as I lay in bed. I will wake to a city muffled by nature, silenced by the Gods, softened by a million kisses from the sky, landing softly, each making its mark, not that we can see it. It is the collective effort we will all see—the result of a stupendously long affair going on for millennia. When the air about the Earth is too heavy, when the Earth is exhausted, the skies shower it with love in plenty. The love is what we know as rain. I think of all this, almost imagining these words written on the page before I sleep. I will wake up to the rain tomorrow. That is reason alone to wake up at all.
And in the morning, I wake up to find a torpor in the air, a sort of tranquil inactivity. It is raining. I go out to the balcony and look at the world. The hills are absent from the landscape. The honking is occasional, most of it muted, and there is nothing but the patter all about. I look at a brave bird still swinging about; the others probably found their way to their nests, or well, the exterior units of air conditioners, tiny holes in buildings and all corners they can fit into. No one finds their way back home if they’re out and about when the rain comes—a temporary respite is enough. I think of this as I watch the bird playing in the rain. I can sense it is playing because it is not flying to and from anywhere. It’s flying about here and there but with no intent to leave. At first, I think it is crazy, but then I realise we are one and the same.
Once it begins to pour, and if you’re still outside, your first bet is to run to shelter. Now, if you’re lucky, you find it, but if it continues pouring, and if you’re without shelter, what better answer is there than to get drenched? To give up and to give way to what happens to you? To not care about safety when it is pouring after all?
And what happens when you’re drenched enough, when there is no way out of the shower, when you find yourself stuck in the middle of it alone?
Like the bird, you begin dancing.