Rain Lovesong

Many thanks to Resham George for the title and the lovely song.

Living most of your life in a desert and later in two decidedly arid cities, makes precipitation of the torrential kind a delightful treat. And since, like in most things, the Author tends to work in extremes, this fascination for rain tends to tip towards eccentric.

Simply put, I love the rain.
I can make a literary case for it: Rain is like a physical manifestation of Wordsworth's much quoted "spontaneous over-flow of powerful feelings".Only it doesn't wait for tranquility. It arrives when it does, and does not give you a choice about whether or not you are ready for the downpour. I suppose that too is a part of the charm. Rain does not allow secrets; it drenches you completely, seeking the fissures in your soul and filling them to the brim. It renders all the time you spent worrying about what to wear useless because at the end you'll still just "...look like a  cat that stuck its nose into a socket that shocked it" (once again, thank you Resham George). And yet the rain loves you, regardless-- and probably because of-- the fact that you really can't hide from him. Of course he can be quite frustrating. Like when he signals his arrival with so much promise employing all the fanfare of flushed skies, thunderous laughter and lightning smiles only to go speeding away on the wings of a smirking wind. Worse still is the half-hearted rain where he is just showing waaaaaay too much attitude. Times like these you wish the rain was an actual person rather than a personified entity so you could give him a piece of your mind. Yet, even as you pout in disappointment, you know he's probably doing that only to see you pissed off and looking like an idiot. Humph.

Thing is, you don't stand a chance against  so much exuberant bonhomie. The rain, in his overwhelming loving, washes out everything leaving you clean, pristine and strangely rejuvenated. Even the dirt is a happier brown after a good downpour. The rain drowns out all the doubts, the anxieties and replaces it with either the soft, comforting whisper of a gentle shower, or the excited applause of a million droplets, or the exhorting teasing of a bullying deluge. The rain renews, revitalises and reminds one that there is nothing so bad that a good cloudburst cannot wash away. The rain hugs you close and lets you expend your emotions, letting your tears meld with his or rumbling an answering laugh to yours. And then there is the quiet content of sipping a cup of hot chai  while watching the rain run riot, soaking in the joy of knowing that there is always beauty in the world. Even if it does cause power cuts and jams traffic.

I love the rain because it reminds me that regardless of how small you are in the wide world, the world still loves you. That small raindrop that hits your face is a kiss from the universe, telling you that there is still something to look forward to. The wind has been picking up outside my window and I expect to hear the soft rumble of thunder some time tonight. The first rains are finally arriving and life, once again, is made possible.

Book Bouquet

Rustle, flip-
release.
The mellow parchment smell
wafting up
chocolate...
coffee mists
rising
from thought's sandal spine.
Delicious!

While the world sleeps

The thing about being nocturnal is that you have so many experiences which most people who know only the sun don't. They don't get it. They never will either. They think you're crazy if you try to explain it. But I've been called crazy before; and if I am crazy ,it hasn't hurt me yet. So I try to put into words the cool shivers than chase up and down my spine when I walk into the night.

Insomnia is a sweet sweet drug- getting you high on the light silver mist that coats the darkness, seeping into your bones until you tingle with it. The stars smile into your eyes as you walk into the deep music of a hundred crickets harmonizing with the tenors and sopranos of the night birds and creatures.And in that pearl-like moment,cushioned in the soft flesh of time, you are awed by the singular beauty of what only you have. The night, the mist the breeze. They are yours. The multitude sleep unwary as you come alive in the depths of the dark. As new knowledge blooms in your breast,as the world and its sleepless life wraps itself around your soul,you become one with everything. You are the grass which bears you weight like a lover, you are the cool air that rushes into you like a possessing spirit. You are the little mouse scurrying in the dark to live, and the bird of prey that swoops on that mouse to live. You are the moonlight spilling like milk on the the world, you are the shadows that dance around the light.You are the center and the periphery. You are.

I take a deep breath and raise my hands to to the sky- letting myself diffuse like gas molecules into the night. Letting it carry me away in it's light breezy arms into a world away from the world. I walk and walk- and never feel the ground beneath my rubber-soled feet. The breeze picks up and my ears tingle with it's added whistle. The smell of dewy grass and moist earth fill my head until the words stop and the world stops...

The dawn breaks like a glass bangle on the black marble of the sky. The crickets have sung their requiem and the birds pick up the symphony. The flowers rub their sleepy eyes and raise their faces for the sun to kiss. The sleeping world opens it's eyes. But it can never open them like you have. You smile indulgently and breathe deeply. And wait for the night.

Sing...Sing sing..

A tingling at the back of your throat, a sudden rush of air into your lungs, a lightness in your head, a feeling like you are going to rise gently on your toes and soar upwards. And then, the sound.

The mechanics of singing is simply a burst of air shooting out through the larynx, creating a vibration of the vocal chords which is commonly known as voice/bellow/screech...whatever is appropriate. What goes unsaid is the absolute high that one gets when that rush of air flies euphorically out of your lungs.
Nothing but a silence or a song can express pure emotion. Which is probably why Tagore wrote "I would speak but words do not break into song." The laughter of love flowing out in the chords of a sublime sweetness,undefined. The cry of anguish crashing onto the ear straight from the heart- these ions and charges race across the universe, caught only in the golden threads of song or silence. And in todays noisome world, silences are lost in the din. The only hope is song.

When one sings full-throated with the sole intention of singing,there is a rush of adrenaline, the heart throbs like a river in full flood. And as each note rises into the air, bursting the glass orbs of silences, your spirit rises too higher and higher. Until, as the song closes, you are left breathless and flushed, streams of sweat beading down your face and a great sense of liberation. The feeling a child has after running at break neck speed down a meadow. It is pure, it is sweet and it is peace. It is an inexplicable happiness that comes fro release.

Every being on earth was meant to sing, to give voice. It was the Original Expression. The Note of connection. The ultimate expression where nothing is not understood and everybody is heard.

So sing.

Flighty Fancy

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I can't stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me.

- Firefly, title track.

Birds are lucky creatures.
Sure they are pretty much at the bottom rungs of the food chain, they are attributed less sense than what would fit in a teaspoon,and if they're are not eaten they are generally shot at and stuffed for no logical reason. Often they are cursed and pelted with expletives just for relieving themselves when they feel like it. And in recent history, their personal air space has been invaded by huge silver machines or idiotic human beings with a death wish jumping off these same machines (ungainly graceless things)with balloons furling out of their back.

But still, Birds are lucky creatures.
They can fly.

They don't need stupid parachutes,they don't have sit in stuffy,smelly,claustrophobic air planes or hang on to gliders like that tortoise in that folk story.They can experience the extreme freedom of breaking FREE.

The wind whips through their plumage, they have power that is purely theirs- not obtained through any transaction of pieces of paper. Even the crow, the ever irritating marauder of the canteen, in flight, is an admirable sight. There is more grace and abandon in the flight of a crow than in the rumbling,mechanical take off of a man made contraption. Man's effort is admirable yes, but he as in no way conquered flight.Because Man isn't really flying.There is no freedom in man's mechanical fliers. It is all control.There is none of that burst of euphoria as in the cheerful dip and rise of the sparrow. None of the soaring power of the eagles baiting with the wind. To watch a bird take flight is t watch a being break into harmonious freedom. They deliberately and successfully break the petty earthly bonds of gravity and leave behind inconsequential humanity for higher things. For the wind coursing over their bodies, for the power of total freedom, for the untamed abandon of full flight- which no human can ever truly have.

Birds are lucky creatures.