by Shama Jan
I get sad these days when the rain recedes. When the staccato shows suggestions of losing its vigour, preempting the quiet. Where I live, which is home, it is now the season of rain. Where I live, in these parts of the planet, there are only two seasons, of the rain and of the sun. The season of rain and the season of sun. There's always the hope of one in the other, and sometimes like today, they happen at once, in their playful way, two seasons in one.
I get sad, I said, these days when the rain recedes. The sound of rain, that is so loud in the house I live in with its too many windows, carries with it the scent of a friend, long had, and that forever remained. And I want to remain in it as I listen to the sound of rain. Rain is a friend. Or perhaps rain is the meaning of a friend.
I've always wondered what it is that rains when it rains. I've asked my friends the question. One of them said, it is a question in it's true sense for it does not hanker after an answer, it is its own end.
But I did have an answer. I have sensed the answer. I just cannot say it. All I can say is that it is the song of the cuckoo. And also perhaps, the gentle sway of "the plum tree bough, the perching cuckoo has hastily vacated".
It rained afterwards in the poem.
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Shama Jan is a student of literature at the University of Delhi, India. These days, she finds herself perplexed at the accident that she is, that she has ceased to be surprised at anything at all.