With Painted Words

The Sky Under

I am not angry because she has chosen not to come. I am sad, broken. I recall what she used to say: ‘Let it rain. Let the monsoons come and the land flood and I will still be there in a snap.’ She lied, but why?

Yet, knowing this is the tenth monsoon since she has gone, I wait for her. My umbrella is outside, ready as soon as she calls. My mother reminds me, perhaps for the hundredth time that it doesn’t rain in heaven. But I know it does, or she would have come, for sure.

She always loved rains. I remember once we had had a fight. It wasn’t her mistake; but I was stubborn. Maybe I was too young; and maybe I was a man. She would call me man, then wink and laugh. I felt powerful, a man, yet weak. She was, in fact, my power. So that evening, when I stayed away from her, sitting in the balcony, my whiskey glass in my hand, she didn’t complain. Then it rained and she came, saying sorry for a mistake that was mine. Then I also said so.

But it is surprising; it doesn’t rain much these days. See today, it is her birthday and it is absent. My mother is again angry. I see her in front of me; she has tears in her eyes. But mine are dry. I want to hold them – all my tears – and I want to pour them, with the rain, over her when she comes. I know she will come. I am sure.