Love in Four Rains
(The story is set in 2025, but in the slow heart-beat of rural Kerala where the seasons still start with a sigh of rain. Adapted from the Malayalam cult classic 'Thoovanathumbikal', scripted by Padmarajan.)
I. First Mist - Kuttanad, Dawn of Monsoon
Long before the sun had chosen a colour for the sky, Ani Nair unlocked Akshara Offset, the little print-shop that still smelled of his late father's linotype days. A hush lay over the paddy flats; only the oars of an early fisherman knocked the canal water into soft syllables.
Then, as if God remembered to breathe, a spray-fine drizzle fell. It was the kind of rain Kuttanad calls mazha manam- you don't see it, you only feel the air getting colder and the earth giving up its perfume of wet chilli leaves and river-silt. Ani closed his eyes, soaked a moment of quiet into his lungs, and kicked his ancient Bajaj Chetak to life. The scooter coughed, grumbled, then decided to be loyal for one more day.
He rode to Mariya's Chaaya Kada because the first tea of the monsoon tastes different; sharper, like the land itself is awake. Inside the low tiled roof sat a stranger; rain-dark hair looped into a casual knot, black kurta clinging to her shoulders, a dog-eared script resting on her lap. A gecko on the beam clicked twice, and in that tiny silence their eyes met.
“Mazha ethiyo?” Ani's words tumbled out—Has the rain arrived?
“Ithu thudangiyathu alle ullu,” she answered, smiling; What we feel now can't be measured with eyes. Her voice had a sand-papery depth that made ordinary Malayalam sound newly minted.
She was Neela Sadasivan, travelling actor with the Paalakkad Nattaka Sangham. Their temple-courtyard show had drowned in yesterday's storm, the sponsor's advance still unpaid. Now she waited for news and sipped black tea as though each drop told the next line of her play.
Ani spoke little. It was enough to watch the way her fingers drummed on the steel cup; slow at first, then quicker when she remembered a phrase, slower again when she chased a thought. Something inside him, dormant for months, stirred like the first bubble in boiling milk.
Before leaving she turned, brushed rain from her eyebrows, and said, "You smell of printer ink and floodplain. Keep that smell; it belongs only to people who stay." She left a twenty-rupee note under the saucer and walked into the lightening mist.
That night Ani lay on the veranda, rain slapping the mango leaves overhead, and caught himself smiling for no practical reason; a feeling both sweet and frighteningly large.
II. Second Downpour - A Houseboat near Champakulam
Three weeks later the canals rose like breathing creatures. Neela's troupe drifted through Kuttanad on a borrowed rice-barge converted into a house-boat; plank stage on the fore-deck, drums wrapped in plastic, petromax lamps swaying from areca poles. They invited villagers to a free show; no tickets, but the hat would pass after the final bow.
All afternoon women in tiny dug-outs ferried betel-leaf parcels and jackfruit chips to the boat. By dusk clouds thickened into charcoal. The play began; a tragic folk tale of a toddy-tapper and the rain goddess he cannot touch. Thunder rolled like a stage cue; then, halfway through Neela's monologue, the storm broke open; sheets of silver water, warm and urgent.
Lamps hissed out. The audience gasped, then laughed, then settled again in darkness, listening; only Neela's raw voice against the rain-drum on the thatch. She stepped off the script, began improvising; her lines became questions to the clouds, to the soaked children curled in their mothers' sarees, to the land that gives fruit but also floods.
When the play surrendered to the deluge, Ani guided her below deck where the smell of coir matting mixed with wet jasmine from someone's plait. Her hair clung to her cheeks; Ani lifted a stray strand and tucked it behind her ear-a small gesture, yet both of them felt the deck tilt.
"Does the goddess ever leave the rain?" he asked, half-laughing at his own boldness.
"Only if the toddy-tapper learns to breathe underwater," she whispered back; and then she kissed him, slow as ripples widening.
Outside, the river slapped the hull in applause. Inside, two hearts learned the weight of a promise no words had made.
Yet even in that near-dark bliss, Ani's mind sparked an image of Devika Menon -the co-op bank officer whose calm smile his mother trusted like an insurance policy against loneliness. Guilt arrived quietly, sat down beside his joy, and refused to leave.
III. Third Deluge - Onam Eve, Aranmula Market
Onam in the backwaters is festival and freight: canoes jammed with banana stems, markets loud with bargaining, drum troupes waking the temples at dawn. Ani arranged to meet Devika near the steps of the panchayat office, where she supervised a women-run loan kiosk. She wore an ivory set-mundu, rain stains already creeping up the hem. A monsoon cloud snuffed the sun; sudden rain pelted the corrugated roofs.
Devika closed her umbrella and simply let the downpour ribbon down her arms. "There's something about rain; if you lie, it'll wash the lie back onto your face," she said, not accusing, just stating a law of nature. "So tell me, Ani. Why does your voice carry another name these days?"
Market noise faded under the rain's roar; only the temple conch rose above it. Ani opened his mouth, but his confession tangled with the smell of wet turmeric and the memory of Neela's rain-salted kiss. The truth arrived too slowly; Devika read it in his eyes first.
She didn't cry. Instead she reached into her cloth bag, pulled out a ledger wrapped in brown paper, and handed it to him. "These are the accounts of seven paddy farmers whose loans you co-signed last year," she said softly. "Pay the interest on time; I’ll transfer the file to another officer."
Then she held his gaze; steady, kind, devastating in its clarity. "When you learned to read the rain, you forgot to read me," she whispered, stepped into ankle-deep water, and walked away. The crowd folded around her like a curtain closing.
Ani stood as if rooted, the ledger growing heavy under the rain. He realised love is not a coin you flip between two pockets; whoever thinks so will one day reach in and find silence.
That night he rode home over bund roads glistening like wet snakes, tears mixing with the rain. Somewhere a night-heron called; a cry half hope, half hunger.
IV. Fourth Rain - Shornur Junction, Before Sunrise
A fortnight later a single WhatsApp message blipped onto Ani’s cracked screen: Train 16528, Coach S3, 04:20. Neela’s troupe had earned a three-month fellowship at a folk-arts centre in Mysuru. The platform smelled of wet iron, burnt coffee, and champa flowers discarded by pilgrims.
Ani arrived carrying nothing but a canvas duffel and the ledger of seven farmers - debts he had promised himself to honour. Neela emerged from the sleeper coach doorway, hair in a quick braid, a smear of sandalwood still on her wrist from the dawn prayer she never forgot.
"I came to travel with you," Ani said, voice trembling like a lamp in wind. "I sold the old offset press, kept only the land papers. Amma cried but understood."
Neela searched his face with fierce tenderness. "Did you come because you finished your story; or because you ran out of pages?" she asked.
"I came because every path I dreamt ended with your voice reading the last line," he said.
For a moment the station vanished; there was only the intimacy of rain between two foreheads almost touching. Then a farmer’s calloused hand tugged Neela’s sleeve-her troupe brother anxious about the luggage. The spell thinned.
Neela cupped Ani’s cheek, warmth against the dawn chill. "Pay those farmers first," she murmured. "Plant their fields with rain you can hold-not promises that evaporate. Then bring me a story I can act without pretending."
She slipped a coir bracelet onto his wrist - "For courage when the monsoon goes quiet." The train clattered forward; she stepped back, eyes reflecting both ache and faith. In another breath she was gone, coach lights dwindling into the mist beyond the bridge.
Ani remained on the empty platform, water pooling around his sandals. He watched a stray dog shake off the wet, watched a tiger-moth shelter under the sodium lamp, and felt the first fragile peace since the dawn of that season.
Epilogue - When the Next Cloud Gathers
Half a year later, long after the canals recoiled to their narrow beds, a new signboard gleams above the shopfront: "Akshara Press & Folklore Archive." Inside, shelves hold freshly printed pamphlets of folk scripts, QR-coded video DVDs, and a donation box labelled "Rain for Farmers." A young school teacher pedals in from the far bund, rain clouds bruising the afternoon sky.
"I need a notebook," she says, wiping sweat and dust from her forehead. "One thick enough for a year of diaries."
Ani offers her a pad bound in marigold-yellow cloth, the colour of the house-boat lamps the night Neela’s voice married the rain. He smiles, a quiet curve that remembers both loss and promise.
Outside, thunder speaks its first word; the teacher hesitates, notebook clutched under her chin. Ani lifts his chin toward the sky and says, "Don't worry. The first drop always knows exactly where to land."
And as if obeying, a single, perfect raindrop falls; neither on the shop roof nor on the waiting bicycle, but on the open earth between them, sending up a scent so achingly familiar that both hearts pause to listen.
Somewhere far away a train whistle echoes. Somewhere nearer, a paddy seedling feels the cool kiss of the coming storm. Between those two small miracles, another story begins to breathe - soft, human, and impossibly alive.
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