RainDrops

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 started noticing her in the way you notice the first raindrop on a hot Trivandrum afternoon-without meaning to, and then not being able to think of anything else. Every morning, after the security scanner scanned my badge and I did the little dance with the turnstile, I would take the same spot on the wooden bench near reception. It was my "transition area", where coffee met courage, where I pretended to read emails on my phone and absolutely did not watch the glass doors. At 9:41 on the dot-give or take the vagaries of the Kazhakootam traffic, she would appear. Meera.   Shoulder-length hair tucked behind one ear , laptop bag, Saree draped on as a Friday Casual. And each time I saw her coming, my stomach would flip like a gull catching a thermal. The gut knew before the brain; she's here. The sunlight from the atrium would follow her inside, turning the scuffed floor into water. She walked with that quick, quiet purpose of people who don't waste time, and I watche...

The south-western sky over Kakkanad was smudged lilac when Dr. Anand Menon finally peeled off his blood-flecked gloves. A Saturday that had begun with a factory fire, lurched into a bus collision and fizzled out with the usual parade of chest pains left him feeling like a dishrag wrung dry. At thirty-three he was already the unofficial lynch-pin of Lakeshore City Hospital's Emergency Department; solid, unflappable, and so often on call that his mother joked the automatic doors recognised his gait and whispered "Welcome home." He stepped out of the staff gate, stethoscope coiled in a pocket like a tired snake. The air smelled of damp tar and jackfruit leaves; bus headlights cut silver across puddles. Anand was thinking only of the reheated avial waiting in his fridge when he noticed a powder-blue Scooty stalled beneath a fizzing streetlamp. Two women were stranded there. The rider wrestled a stubborn kick-start; the pillion, legs swung to one side, waved cars around with...

When Anvitha first met Rithin, it was in the hum of fluorescent lights and the fragrance of jasmine garlands at a small temple on the outskirts of Alappuzha . Their parents spoke in excited overlaps about horoscopes and train timings; the young pair spoke scarcely at all. She stole a single curious look at him; enough to see the mild confusion behind his polite smile-then lowered her long lashes and turned the look into silence. In that instant, Rithin felt as if a cloud had crossed the sun; the world dimmed yet became mysteriously more vivid. Anvitha was unlike anyone he had seen in the cafés of Koramangala or the glassed-in meeting rooms of his software firm. Her beauty was quiet, almost secretive; A heart-shaped face, all soft angles and sudden mischief, is framed by a river of black hair that never quite behaves; some days it pours straight past her waist, some days it loops into loose waves, and often two rebellious curls slip forward to kiss her cheeks. Wide almond eyes edged w...

(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...

Ravi was on his third cup of chai that evening, huddled by the small, open fireplace in his family’s old stone cottage. Outside, the mountain town of Manali lay still, bathed in moonlight, each street corner covered in a pristine blanket of fresh snow. He could hear the faint sounds of holiday cheer wafting up from the distant marketplace, where vendors sold roasted chestnuts, fresh apples, and handmade woollen shawls to the few tourists braving the winter chill. He hadn’t been back to Manali in nearly five years. His world now was in Delhi, where he worked as an investment analyst, living a life of constant deadlines and traffic snarls. But here, surrounded by his childhood home’s familiar smells of pinewood and burning embers, his heart felt like it could finally breathe. And tonight, he needed that peace more than ever. Ravi sighed, his breath fogging in the chill of the room as he remembered his recent breakup. He’d been with Neha for two years, a relationship filled with promises ...