The Wet Sari Rain Dance

Suddenly the sky turned dark. The nor ’wester storm mercilessly tore through the trees making their branches snap and fall with a heavy thud. The windows began to rattle controllably and the bathroom door flew open. The glass bottle on the windowsill shattered on the sink. A gust of wind blew dry leaves and dust into the room. Then the streetlights went off leaving the lightning to hold the show. And what a show it was! Flashes of lightning tore up and down the pitch-black sky. All sounds were drowned in that of the thunder that threatened to pull trees off their roots. A bolt fell on the terrace sending shock waves through the building. Rain followed in thick waves threatening to deluge the earth.

They brought back memories of all the mandatory rain scenes in Hindi films. The hero and heroine drive down to a forest. Their jeep breaks down. They decide to walk across to the nearest forest bungalow for help. They are fully drenched by the time they get to the front door. But the kindly old watchman lets them in for the night and opens a room. The hero invites the heroine to get out of her wet clothes and does the same himself. She comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel drying her hair with another. They get the fire burning and gaze into each other’s eyes. And then something happens. ‘Kuch Kuch Hota hai’ that was immortalized by the title of a film. The second scenario is that  of the hero and heroine being caught in a heavy downpour as they frolic on the grass. The heroine is dressed either in a transparent white or turquoise sari. As the raindrops fall on her face, she breaks into a raindance with her sari clinging to every curve of her body. The hero’s amorous gaze makes her shy and playful in turns. The hero either joins her in the dance or lets his scopophilic gaze follow every provocative movement of her body. The third scenario is one of a young mother with two small children being driven out of her house. As she arrives in an unknown city holding her children’s hands, it begins to pour and the family is forced to take shelter under a bridge. The woman and the children look helplessly at the skies waiting for the rain to stop.

But it also brought back other happy memories. Of returning home from school drenched to the bone and wading through ankle deep water to hot snacks prepared by Mother. Drying my thick long hair and changing into dry clothes before sitting around the kitchen table sharing tidbits about the happenings of the day. That was a long long time ago when I would go racing down the service lane on my newly acquired cycle with my long hair flying behind. Now I could not even walk, leave alone run. I was confined to my bed since last summer after a drunk driver drove his car straight into my cycle. After a couple of months in the hospital, I was sent home with a cast on my right leg. A year is a very very long time when you are sixteen going on seventeen.

I watched the seasons come and go. The multi-coloured kites soaring in the sky announced the arrival of the festival of Basant and the dazzling display of firecrackers of Diwali. I could tell the exact hour of the day from the shade of the sky. I often woke up when the birds began to cackle at false dawn and went back to sleep looking at the pitch-dark sky. I saw the sky turn pink and knew that another day had dawned. I had learnt to tell the time by following the movement of the sun on the treetops and the green of the leaves. Every morning I saw the pigeons fly past my window to the neighbour’s balcony to peck at the grains he had strewn across the floor. At midmorning, I spotted the green parrots merged with the leaves of the mango tree. I counted the little black birds perched on the electric wire. I saw the sky turning orange as the sun set and followed the birds going to roost. When the sky turned dark and the moon rose from behind the window in the front, I shut my eyes and made a wish every night. Then, I would sink gratefully into sleep.

I had learnt to identify different sounds of the day over this year. The helpers noisily flipflopped up the stairs. The milk delivery boy mounted two steps at a time and were out before anyone knew. The janitor sang old Hindi film songs as he washed the steps his voice echoing in the building. The helper above my apartment dusted the bedclothes and furniture so fiercely that I could hear it in my room below. Having done that, she would drag the heavy furniture about and begin grinding spices on a flat stone making the walls shake. The pressure cooker’s whistling would tell me that the cook in the house below was steaming potatoes for breakfast. Electric rickshaws and cycle rickshaws would honk announcing their arrival to their daily passengers. The movement of cycles, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws would tell me it was 9 a.m. and time to leave for work. Then I would hear the cars below my balcony start and could tell from the sound of each who had left exactly when. The sound of the conch shells and bells in the house next door told me that the gentleman had left and the wife was showered and ready to break her fast. The rattling of the cylinders being dragged up the steps announce the arrival of the gas delivery man. But the koel calling out at odd hours of the day caused a bit of confusion.

Not only sound but my sense of smell had also sharpened over this year. I could tell who was cooking what for breakfast, lunch and dinner from the aromas that wafted up or down my window. I knew who had left the milk on the fire for too long from the burning smell. I could identity the smell of fish frying above and vegetables being sauted below. I knew from the smell of phenoyle whose house was being mopped. The sharp smell of detergent rose from the laundry hung out to dry. The stink of organic manure betrayed the busy presence of the gardener below. The garbage van left a stinking trail that remained for long. The perfume the lady of the house wore betrayed her arrival. But the smell that I loved most was that of wet earth and the bush below my window that exuded an intoxicating aura.

I waited for nightfall so that I could go to sleep and visit the land of dreams. In my dreams, I would forget I was confined to my bed and travelled wherever I wished to. I would race around on my new bike through the entire neighbourhood. I would run to catch a train just about to leave the platform. Most of the dreams would begin on a happy note. I would either be in a classroom listening to a lecture or walking around with friends on the school grounds. I would be sneaking out for a movie with friends thinking of ways to get past the watchman on the school gate. I would be on a shopping expedition with Mother and couldn’t find the shop I was looking for. Sometimes, I would find myself climbing the steps to a temple on top of a hill. At others, I would be racing down the slopes in a village at the foot of a mountain. But then consciousness would dawn and remind me that I couldn’t possibly be doing any of these. I would have dreams where I couldn’t move however hard I tried. I was being chased by a robber and couldn’t move an inch. I was trying to cross a road and had my knees buckle under me. I was trying to shut the windows and a face appeared behind a window and tried to break in. I would run into my bedroom and lock the door from inside but I couldn’t. This is the moment when I would wake up sweating and go back to sleep.

I woke up to the pitter patter of the rain on the window. I had overslept because the sky was still a faded blue after the previous night’s rain. The main road outside looked like a wreck with huge branches of trees fallen astride. The premature rain had made the mangoes fall from the trees. Tribal women, their heads covered in their faded saris, were breaking the fallen branches and tying them up in bundles. They picked up the fallen raw mangoes in sacks. Domestic helpers walking or cycling under old umbrellas donated by their employers pulled their saris tight around their shoulders and rushed to report to work. They shouted loud greetings as they passed milk and newspaper delivery boys wrapped in shiny black raincoats riding on their cycles. Cars in every shape and colour ferrying children to school sped past them splashing slush on the walkers. The rickshawpullers took cover under the banyan tree on their rickshaws hoping for an early customer. The electric rickshaw drivers pulled in with blue flaps on both sides of the passenger seat to pick up the schoolchildren just in time for school. The newspaper boy threw the newspaper into my balcony.  The janitor rattled in on his secondhand moped wearing an old raincoat. The gardeners were the only ones who did not need to cycle down all the way from their distant villages to water the rose garden below.

The weather was delicious. The smell of wet earth was divine. I could watch the leaves glistening in the rain all day. I liked nothing better than curling up with a Romance on a day like this and finish it at one go. I quietly submitted to the care of my loving mother, ate the bowl of fruit and cereal with hot milk she placed on a tray before me before she slipped out to pack others off to work or school. Before she left, she placed the new book she had brought me from the lending library the previous day. I couldn’t ask for more. By the time she returned with a hot cup and tea and pakoras that a rainy day like this called for, after making the beds and tidying the rooms, I was already in  a mansion in Spain with the twenty something British woman hired to be a companion to the hero’s mother.  Mother tried to draw me into a conversation telling me about the happenings in our neighbourhood. She talked about the neighbour’s daughter’s wedding and how beautiful she had looked din the bridal red sari and traditional jewellery. She continued that she had not seen any point in buying the bride a gift because she was going to go away to Singapore with her husband, who was just about as tall as her. She mentioned that she had met my friends returning from school and they had sent their greetings. We gossiped about family and friends for an hour until Mother returned to the kitchen to warm our lunch. I cherished these hours the most because I had Mother all to myself. But today we had to cut it short because the help had not showed up due to the rain.

As mother went to the kitchen to do the dishes, I returned dreamily to the page I had bookmarked which described the owner of the mansion in great detail. He had an aquiline nose, finely cut lips, a square jaw, flecks of grey in his hair. At 32, he was ten years older than the heroine. “Senorita, what are you doing in my study?”, he asked in a gruff tone appearing from behind the tall mahogany bookcase. The young heroine flushed and was completely tongue-tied. She was trying to find her way to the terrace to get some fresh air. I closed my eyes and thought of someone ten year older than I who could pass as the Spanish aristocrat. But I couldn’t think of anyone who remotely looked like the tall, dark, handsome hero of the romances. I created a profile based on all those I had had a crush on and a fuzzy image emerged. I daydreamed about this blurred figure sweeping me off my feet, whisking me away to his palatial house in a distant land and me gliding about in a dress that reached just up to my knees showing my long legs to advantage. As I daydreamed about balancing on highheels, a pain shot through my leg rudely bringing me out of my daydream.

I put the book aside and went to snooze. The pain had subsided and I was floating about in a school party modestly dressed in a long dress. Someone walked beside me holding my hand. I lost my balance for a brief second but he prevented me from falling down. We walked past many known faces who had a knowing grin. I followed his steps mirroring his movements and let him hold me. I could feel his breath on me, I could feel the firm grasp of his hands. But I couldn’t make out the face of the person who was guiding me to the dance floor. “Wake up, honey, its tea-time,” Mother gently pressed my arm and pulled me out of my fairytale world into the real one. My leg was still in its cast. I could barely sit up in bed. It had stopped raining. The evening had set in. The birds were returning to their nests. It was too dark to see anything outside. I returned to finish my book where the hero had just reprimanded the young heroine for a minor infringement of house rules. I read it through until they made up and he proposed to her. And they lived happily ever after.

The next morning the house help showed up in a dishevelled state. Her thatched hut had been blown away in the thunderstorm of the night before. Thy had spent the night under a tarpaulin sheet but the rain had washed everything they possessed, the food, the clothes, even the wood on she would cook. Her sari was dripping wet. She looked nowhere like the voluptuous heroine of the Hindi film. It jolted me out of the dreamy Romance. I was back in the real world. Where I couldn’t drag myself to console her. Where she didn’t know how to cook her next meal.

Whenever I sit down to enjoy the rain falling outside my balcony even today, I can hear the thunder blow away someone’s house. Whenever I lie on dry lavender sheets, I can smell the damp walls through which rain seeps in. Whenever I munch on hot pakoras and sip my tea, I can taste rainwater that blew off someone’s fire. And I limp back into my bedroom thinking of that rainy day.