The Rain Gods

The grey clouds have held a pregnant promise for more than the due time. Every evening, they hang heavy, obscuring light and making every expectant eye turn skywards; and then they betray them. Like the girl who gives you that fleeting smile and then goes cold when you approach her.

Remorselessly they sponge clean the sky by night and leave the naked shining stars smiling at the practical joke. The sun comes up in the morning, the sky is blue and the wind balmy; but it does not feel like spring, it is just a beacon lit in the clear expanse of the sky, a rude reminder that it is another dry day of the monsoon.

A draught is imminent, and the city dwellers are a little worried about the water supply next summer. But it does not perturb them – why should it? The rainfall does not decide whether they can afford to send their kid to school this session. It does not decide whether they can celebrate Diwali this year with the same pomp as they did last year. It does not decide whether they can pay the premium on the loan for their house or their car. It does not decide the frequency of their meals. All they’ll probably say is, “Buying the raincoat this season was a big waste”.

I am one of those guys, and I live in a world where nature; in normal circumstances does not decide anything of vital importance, and this huge fact goes seemingly unnoticed. How often have you dwelt upon the weather and its effects on your daily life? Apart from cursing the sun when the air-conditioner is not working or cursing the rain when you have to go out, we do not give a damn to the follies of Mother Nature.

But I realise that I live in a country where the rainfall does decide the minutiae of the lives of millions. Now I have never lived in a village and am used to getting my food from the supermarket; hence I cannot fully comprehend the feeling in the eyes of the farmer, who sits on his haunches staring at the sky occupying most of the front page of my newspaper. All I get is a feeling of dread. I’m not scared of the global warming, or climate change, or the glaciers or anything; what I am really disturbed about is this irrational fear of ever finding myself in the shoes of that farmer. I do not know how I got this idea into my head, but it haunts me.

I’ve had dreams. I see that I have a running debt, I am out of cash; my family is hungry and I have nothing to feed them. My livestock looks sadly at their empty feeding bins, my wife has a knowing stare, and my kids have a blank one. I can no longer look into those eyes and assure them everything will be alright; I know it wouldn’t be. I avert their gaze and walk out to the parched field. I sit on my haunches and scrape the ground with my hands, picking the now withered seeds which held so much of promise a month ago when I pledged the land to buy them. I feel sad, and with searching eyes I look up to the sky; my eyes not searching for clouds but something else, an assurance from a higher power. It is at that moment I hear a click and I wake up. The photograph is on the top of my newspaper.

It is on these days, that I put aside all my rational beliefs; I forget that I am an atheist and that nature can very well be explained scientifically, I just dearly wish that there were a god and that he would be listening to prayers and putting things right, just this once.