RainDrops

Some stories start with a railway station. Not the big, noisy ones in cities, but the smaller ones where trains come in unhurried, and the chai seller still calls out each order by name. This one begins in such a place. I first met Hari when I got down from the Mysore passenger at a little town that looked as if it was still untouched by the rush of the world. Hills in the distance, a lazy river running along the tracks, and a row of yellow buildings that seemed to have dozed off in the sun. I had come looking for silence that weekend. What I found was a story. He appeared beside me so quietly that I almost stepped on him. "Sir, you need auto, lodge, or temple darshan" he asked, tilting his head slightly, eyes searching my face for clues. I waved the others away. There was something strangely calm about him. He looked like the usual local guide in these small towns, with a faded shirt, cotton bag and sun browned skin. Yet there was a softness in his eyes that did not ...

Kuttanad, late monsoon. The rain had thinned into a steady thread, like someone pulling a white cotton wick through the sky. At the cooperative hospital, the backwater slapped the mossy steps and brought with it the smell of silt and coconut husk. Dr Ajayan reached for the metal gate and felt it cold against his palm. He had been on duty for sixteen hours. The ward slept in uneven breaths. From the postnatal room came the hiccuping cry of a new baby and the soft persuasion of a tired nurse. A feral cat stared in from the verandah, eyes narrowed, tail writing things in the damp air. Just before dawn, a woman came in with a breathless boy. The boy’s face was pale and tight at the lips. The woman had tied her hair in a knot that had loosened into a tail of frizz. Rainwater clung to the end of her sari like a shadow. Asthma, Ajayan thought. He did not look at the file first. He crouched near the boy and spoke in a simple way. Tell me where it is tight. The boy pointed to his chest with ...

There are some rains that do not belong to the sky alone. They fall inside you, quietly, long after the clouds have left. It was one such afternoon when the sea itself seemed tired of its own noise. The rain had just begun, slow at first, like hesitant thoughts. Arun sat by the window of his rented house in Vypin, a cup of steaming tea beside his laptop, lines of code and test cases staring blankly at him. The wind brought in the smell of the sea and wet earth, that faint scent that always carried a hint of home, of something unfinished. He was in his late forties now, with a streak of grey beginning to show near his temples. Life had moved through its seasons. A long career in tech, the hum of meetings, the quiet company of his child's laughter echoing from another room, the careful plans for tomorrow that always came before sleep. His wife, Anitha, was kind and composed, the sort of woman who believed that life was best lived in quiet balance. They shared the same roof, the sa...

I first heard her voice on a wet evening when the sky over Kuttanad folded into rain. The paddy fields looked like sheets of water stitched with green thread. I had come to the village to photograph the monsoon for a magazine, thinking of reflections and clouds, not of people. But the sound that rose from the snake grove by the banyan tree changed my plans. It was an old song carried by a small wind, a voice with the warmth of lamp light. A woman stood near the kolam , the sacred drawing made with powders of rice and leaf. Beside her sat a man with a pulluvaveena , its gourd body resting on his knee. The woman held a small frame drum and a stringed bow. She began with a call that felt both prayer and story. Later I learned her name. Meera. She was a Pulluvan singer who travelled with her uncle to sing for families that kept the old serpent worship alive. They drew the kolam on floor or earth. They sang to invite protection for the fields and the people. They sang to heal, and to th...

I first saw him at the bend where our quiet lane in Bangalore met the noisy market road. He stood beside a cart with iron wheels, a faded rug thrown over a mound of almonds, raisins, and figs. His beard was peppered with grey. His eyes had that faraway look some people carry, as if a wind from a distant valley still moved inside them. He called out in a slow, careful voice, the words rounded by another language before they turned into ours. Almonds, fresh almonds. Raisins like small suns. He became a small season in our lane. He came when the morning light made stripes through the jacaranda leaves. He came when the evening cooled the dust and children ran with their school bags like impatient birds. He smiled at the old women with oil in their hair, at the security guard who had a cough every winter, at the milkman who never smiled at all. One morning my daughter, Anya, stopped in front of him. She was five, at that age when every day makes a new law for the world. She looked up at ...