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She walks down the rain-wet path, her old beat-up sneakers slipping and stumbling on the soaking tar. Her head covered in a plastic raincoat which is making her arms bead with sweat, its purple-pink looking bright and unusual on this dark day.
The clouds have already covered the sky and it’s barely even noon, promising a day ahead of rain, which seems fitting for a day like today where it feels like everything may fall apart. She finally slips off the raincoat, and instead lets a brown umbrella unfurl in front of her, and holds it just above her shoulder, her hands resting on the cardigan she’s thrown on for today.
Streetlights gleam already, turned on early as she walks down these familiar streets which she may lose, thoughts running like water down the streets through her head.
Her mother’s handbag, which smelled like the neroli perfume.
The thin silver chain that her grandmother used to wear around her neck, the one with the little elephant, the one which she always used to talk about.
Slim gold chains between a six-year-old’s pudgy fingers.
“One day, Nisha, you’ll own this necklace. I’ll leave it for you in my will.”
The will, that never got written.
The necklace, which was being sold off to some person in some jewelry shop that probably smelled like hand sanitizer and sweat, encased underneath fingerprint-stained glass, touched by fingers that weren’t hers. Placed around the neck of someone who she had probably never seen before.
They were going to move, going to leave everything behind because Mama was so sad all the time nowadays.
Mama just wanted to leave the house which still smelled like attar, the cupboards which held mothballs and Nisha’s grandmother’s perfectly preserved saris.
Nisha had to get it inside her head.
That they were leaving, they were escaping because Mama thought that it was the easiest thing to do, to leave everything behind.
These rain-slicked roads which she had skipped down as a little seven-year-old. The little galli where she had fallen off her bike, skinned her nine-year-old knee.
And just a few days ago, when she had walked down to the bus-stop with her mother, trying to cover the tear-tracks on her face so that her friends wouldn’t become the awkward, strange people they became when she brought up the topic of her grandmother’s death.
Her umbrella is dripping water.
Her shoes are soaked.
I wish I had brought slippers instead of my shoes.
A laugh bubbled up in her, the utter randomness of that thought, the way it slipped into her mind as easily as all the memories did. The giggle died on her lips, wafting away on the monsoon breeze, as the rain began to fall in heavier, bigger droplets that made audible thak-thak-thak sounds against the cloth of her umbrella.
She looks up, letting the earthy smell of the rain overwhelm her five senses.
The rain was her grandmother’s favourite season.
The monsoon is like the sky’s way of letting out its feelings, nature’s way of releasing its burden and still giving us a beautiful gift. The smell of the rain-soaked earth, there have been countless times when I have walked down the street and wished it could be bottled up in bottles and sold as a scent. The soft sound of the raindrops hitting the ground, a melody.
The girl walks down the rain-soaked streets, the drops hitting the ground a percussion to the thunder’s baritone growl. The opening notes of her grandmother’s favourite song, the one which she always used to sing along to as the raindrops accompanied the mridangam and violin, the soft slapping on her hand on her knee to the beat.
The girl starts to sing to herself, splashing in puddles, lowering her umbrella to taste the rain. It tastes fresh, a new beginning somewhere else, with someone new.
Maybe someday, the girl may listen to the raindrops falling outside her window, and still hear the soft opening notes of her grandmother’s favourite song.
Maya George
Vibrant Nature - Artwork by Aadvik Hooda
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