I am in my room and the power has been cut. Once again. I am reading by the flashlight of my cell phone, a worthy and indestructible $20 investment I’m glad I’ve made. After the sun sinks, the heat retreats, and the air resembles something close to pleasant. As amazing as all of my travels have been, I enjoy greatly the feeling of being home, of being in my own bed, of being on my own terms. I notice the wind has picked up, and it smells of rain. Yashada and I have joked about rain earlier today, wistfully looking towards the heavens. Can it be?
I am in the bathroom, and the wind has picked up. It is noticeable even through my picture-frame-sized windows, ruffling my scattered clothes, disturbing the hygiene products on my shelves. This wind is strong, and I smile at the thought of the relief it’ll bring. Suddenly, I hear water. Or at least something I can hope is water, and I rush out.
In my room, through my window and screen door, I can hear it. Pouring. Gushing. Rushing and wetting and saturating every square centimeter of earth in my courtyard. The rain has come. It has finally come!
My happiness gushes as well; it pours out of me in the form of a big smile, even though there is no one at the rural center campus to see it. This rain will make everyone’s day. It will cool the earth, settle the dust, allow the trees to sprout more leaves. Maybe the pond will get bigger – so big that the villagefolk will be able to wash the cows there again. The frogs will come out. This is good for everyone.
But it is dinner time. I must go. The Rishi Valley dining hall waits for no one, and I am slightly hungry. If I don’t make it, I will definitely be hungry in three hours. And most of all, I have missed the food. My taste buds have missed its spice, as much as my fingers have missed its texture. I will go. The rain can come with.
I put on my flip flops and grab the umbrella. I cannot remember how many months have passed since I have needed to use it. Five? Four? I am excited at the thought. The smile has not left my face. Fumbling to open the door, the umbrella prematurely opens – perhaps it can too, somehow, feel the excitement of the event. As I step across the threshold, the rain intensifies. It is dancing now. Saturating. Filling. Flowing. Overflowing. Even in the darkness, it is beautiful. It covers the almost-full moon, interrupting the layer of night only with short flashes of lightning, which make me giddy.
I step out of the courtyard and into the wet sandy dirt. I know my shoes will be dirty, my feet covered in mud and sand and wet, sticky leaves even before I reach the road. I pause for a moment, savoring this thought. I know that my clothes will be soaked and no umbrella could ever truly assist in this type of downpour. This does not deter me. I pause for another moment, this time deciding how to navigate – my usual path includes scrambling down rocks where a stream once was, where a stream will now be reborn, thanks to the crying of the skies. I decide to brave it. Ankle deep in water, I descend. My cell phone, still my only source of light, is in my hands. I hope it will not get too wet. I hope it will still function. I hope my mom will still be able to call me. The phone gives me a wide, but not intensely bright, light. I hope the snakes aren’t out; the doctor is out of town this week.
The main road is a maze of tiny rivers and streams. I navigate clumsily, cool water rushing sand and mud particles between my toes, brushing my ankle bones, lapping at my shins. I try to walk in the middle of the road, where there seem to be the least amount of puddles. I have been traveling for too long to blindly walk the path; I cling to the light and persist.
Soon, the bottom of my Bermuda jean shorts is soaked, clinging to my legs. I pass the bridge and trudge uphill. The wind changes, bringing rain from my right, rather than my left, and water is running down my lower back. How silly I must look! There is no one on the road, no noise coming from the villages around, at least not any loud enough to overpower the rain. I pass the gate, and the watchman says something. He is hiding in his tiny booth, holding a flashlight in order to help me light my way. I say hello and smile vigorously. He cannot see or hear this, of course, in the midst of the rain. He must think I am insane. He might think that all while people are a little insane. In India, weather dictates, and the rain is loud and clear in its demand for you to stay home. But I am hungry, and I have missed the rice and sambar. In our Western contexts, we have been taught over and over that weather can be “conquered”. We put in air conditioning units and powerful heaters in our homes. We buy snow tires. We build overhead tunnels in Minneapolis to show nature who’s boss. It takes a volcano erupting and grounding flights for nearly a week to humble us, to humiliate all of our silly inventions. Of course nature knows, as it has always known, who is boss.
I hop now, from one sandbar to the other. My fear is no longer of snakes, but of branches being torn off of the neem trees and hitting me in the head. Still, I think, the branches that have fallen from the previous storm are not that large; I could escape with a few bruises and still make it to the dining hall for dinner. The rivers and streams lap at the soles of my feet; I am not cold.
Lightning strikes. Again and again. The night sky thunders. I play a childhood game, counting from when lightning strikes to when I hear thunder, bringing back memories of huddling with my grandmother in a huge bed in our dacha, amidst many heavy blankets, and counting from when lightning strikes to when we hear thunder. The point of the game was to find out how far away the lightning is, each count representing a number of kilometers, and thus, safety. I remember Ilya playing, too, and us rarely counting in unison, but somehow always ending on the same number. I count: one, two, three, four. Usually, you can stop counting after four, because the lightning is then far enough for you to stop caring. It flashes again, and I see the rivers rushing through the Rishi Valley campus. It is an exhilarating, beautiful sight. I laugh a laugh audible only to myself in this downpour, as my skin tingles with wetness. It is raining harder now.
A huge stream has formed where my trusted path once was. I navigate by jumping onto a sandbar and then a higher bank the water has made. I walk amongst vegetation, which holds the ground in place. This rain is the earth’s way of rejoicing. This rain gives life. It quenches the thirst of the ground, the crops, the food we’ll eat another day. It cools the air so we might be more productive the next day. It seeps into the ground, providing us with more cups to drink and more showers to be had. It is magic of the simplest kind – natural.
Here, in rural India, it does not take a volcano grounding flights to show you who’s boss. We all know. Nature is worshipped and loved and revered every day. A torrential downpour greatly changes the schedule of the next day, the next week. As does the lack thereof. Or even a three degree increase in the temperature. Here, in rural India, we do not see nature as a force to be conquered, something to be outsmarted by technology. Here, we see it as an inherent and symbiotic part of our life – a god, a mother, a natural complement of our day. And we celebrate it.
I finally reach the dance hut, from where I can see the dining hall. It seems eerily quiet, only wisps of whispers reaching through the music of dancing drops. As I prepare to climb the stone steps, I see that they have transformed into a mighty waterfall, water rushing down the stairs, splashing its way towards vegetation. I climb through the roaring pressure of the fall, washing my shoes in the process. I am thankful that we, as a society, are not sterile here. We don’t mind mud between our toes or rainwater to wash our feet. Some time later, when I return home, I do not wash my feet under the tap; the water of the rains is pure enough for me.
As I approach the dining hall, skipping over tiny streams making vessels in the tissue of the ground, I laugh again, inaudible in the downpour. I am soaked. I am happy. I’m not even cold. And I finally made it to dinner. I open the tap to wash my hands with soap before my meal, and at this, too, I laugh, for there is water all around me. A thought slips into my mind, I wonder how bizarre I look, I bet my hair is a mess. And this is, too, pleasing, an obvious worry of the Western world penetrating this beautiful Indian moment.
I hang my tired umbrella and sit, soaked, to have my dinner. The lunch lady gives me a smile that warms, comforting my dinner experience. It is pleasant in the dining hall – the power is out and the dim emergency lights add softness and warmth to the hot and tasty meal. I pick up rice and dal with my fingers and gingerly place it on my palate. It is nourishing, filling, comforting. The rain is pounding, banging, and threatening against the roof.
A couple of hours later, I am back in my room. The rain had ceased, moved on to water someone else’s crop, to better someone else’s day. I am dumbfounded by the stillness outside. It is like the rain never happened, like it never wreaked joyful havoc on our little valley. But I will not forget. I will remember. I will always remember.
Tomorrow will be a new day. A different day. Tomorrow will be a day after the rain.
