In my house, we always alert each other when it starts to rain. It’s an act of love – for the rain, which must not go unacknowledged; and for each other, since we so relish the monsoon. The first night is the most exciting. Water everywhere after a sultry summer, strong winds, and slamming doors. Whooshing, swishing, symphonic – everything moves in rhythm. We gaze reverentially at it – from the balcony, from the kitchen window, from the cracks in the blinds – we gaze and gaze into the distance. The lights in the neighbouring buildings flicker through this cool, misty curtain, and we’re filled with some sort of hope – that now the world is new and refreshed. Or at least, it will be, after a good soak.
**
Last year, I would do the dishes every night after dinner. Most were easy, clean in just a few scrubs and swipes. But the big ones, the kadhais and deep pans that we cooked in, usually posed a problem. Dried bits of food and spice would cling on to them, and it took a day’s worth of pent up aggression to scrape them off. That is, until my mum noticed my labours and offered a simple solution.
As it turns out, it’s best to fill up the difficult vessels with water before starting on the dishes, and leave them alone until everything else is washed. “Let them soak.” When you come back and drain them, all the clingy food and spice loosens up, and very little scrubbing is required before the vessels emerge clean and sparkling. Problem solved. Such is the magic of soaking.
**
One of the first poems we learned in our third standard English class was about an umbrella.
I have a new umbrella A bright red new umbrella A new red silk umbrella I wish that it would rain.
My friend and I made a song out of it, which we’d scream on most monsoon afternoons as we walked to our school buses. That month, I actually did acquire a new umbrella. It wasn’t red, but a beautiful blue – kiddy sized with yellow cat ears poking up at the top. And it was all mine. I would lug it around in a tote bag, and wait impatiently for it to rain. When it did, I boasted my umbrella to the world.
And then I could go walking
Just like a lady walking
A grown up lady walking
Away ‘way down the lane.
I could tell that the people around me just couldn’t take their eyes off my umbrella, and I reveled in it. I took pride in how much of an adult I was being, procuring my own umbrella from my own bag, opening it up as if I did this all the time, and elegantly keeping myself from getting drenched, yellow cat-ears and all. An important and early lesson in using the validation of others to save myself from soaking.
**
My mum is doing the dishes today, filling up the dirtiest vessels with water. I sit still on a chair, trying to exercise my ability to think. These days it often seems like I’ve lost it in the clutter of obligations and commitments. The air is blue, it is seeping into my pores. Something starts to stir as I fill up – a knot I wasn’t sure existed is coming undone. I don’t know if I’m ready for it. I leap desperately for my phone, convinced that this is the best time to check for texts; there are none. I should do a social media round, then, catch up on what I’ve missed in the last five minutes.
The sound of hurried, falling water travels from the kitchen into the rest of the house. I am drained. I practice the same routine most nights, promising that I will allow myself to roll around in my thoughts, to be alone. And failing. Soaking is easy for the kadhais. For me, it makes it hard to breathe, and I can never last too long.
**
I’ve always found painting to be a remarkably loaded pleasure. I adore it, but since I never proclaimed it to be my passion, it doesn’t feel like something I should spend much time on. Focus on your writing, everything else is secondary. I dab my brush on the paper, and tight droplets sit down on it as if too stubborn to move. With some coaxing, they begin to expand, and flow here and there. Soon, they sink gleefully into the paper, and leave bright soft colours shining in their wake.
I spent years denying I was anything like my painter mother, years trying to force warped notions of individuality upon myself for no particular reason. They are all undone by half a day of watercolours, and my mother’s cries of delight. It is half a day of happiness and coursing release. Yet, too anxious anxieties about the future and building a strong career, the happiness doesn’t seem worth the time I’ve spent neglecting my professional goals. I cannot relax enough to immerse myself in it. In the end, it feels as if the paper and brushes are better at soaking than I am.
**
During another childhood monsoon, I lived in my grandmother’s house. My cousin, several years my senior, would come home from school a little after me. He was in the eighth grade, and so had been charged with the responsibility of soaking his white school shirt in a bucket every afternoon. Since I was only eight, I was not compelled to perform this chore. So, sadly enough, I remained unexposed to the wonders of the task until I watched my cousin doing it.
He dropped his shirt into the bucket along with some surf, and turned on the hot faucet. An unhurried burble echoed off the bathroom walls, and a thin fog settled on its window. A few seconds later, I looked into the bucket, and witnessed one of the most glorious phenomena of my life. A soapy foam was starting to rise from the water, sparkling and beckoning to be played with. So I played with it, and had an unexpectedly good time. Thereon my cousin made sure to yell out to me every afternoon when the foam would start to rise, and I played for as long as one can play with something as transient as foam. Soaking was a lot easier back then.
**
Outside, it pours. The night lies still under the whirling rain, barely visible beyond its white storm. All surfaces become drums for the night, beating as the rain plays them. Now the streets will be clean and when we wake up in the morning, we should be new. That is the promise of the monsoon.
Yet, tonight is a weird sort of rain. Water flows into every lane and corner, onto rooftops and trees and the ground. But then it flows out. The roofs are tarpaulin or cement or sloping, the ground is concrete, and leaves never absorb much water. So, gutters, drains rush to divert it, and carry it away before it can stay too long. It continues to pour, singing its beating song, and it continues to be deflected and rushed away. One enormous, elaborate network that prohibits the world from soaking.
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