Unstoppable is the rain. People expect the rain, it brings change, it brings crop, it brings joy and then sorrow. The monsoon is one such rain in India that enters from the southern most part of the country, the mystical state of Kerala, in June and moves northward. The monsoon is a sweet romance between the rain-bearing clouds and the hot, dry soil. It happens every year, the rains, come and gone, but grief returns with the revolving year, as Shelley quoted in Adonais.
Never been able to understand what the so-called Elders would think, he played with glee in the rain, forgetting everything, happy when he was supposed to be sad. The monsoons rush from the west, bringing along with them the force that would clatter the restless palm leaves, tap the hot roofs and hit the ground, enlivening the hidden aroma of the soil, spreading goodness everywhere, which is what he thought. Little did he know that some years later, the same rains would remind him of the times that he wished, weren't lived. Why would he mingle with the other kids whom he didn't know much about? That was not precisely important at that time, because the occasion was not a very cheerful one. Why would they bring kids to such a function? Well, they brought them along and that was reality. Old hags keep wailing around, he thought, for no reason, he added. A funeral isn't an occasion for merriment either, he didn't know that. He didn�t know how many days passed, it had also appeared like ages, sometimes.
Joy came to his house, when there was no happiness in the house. Smaller fights, incidents worth ignoring and undercurrents which children aren't supposed to even understand, he never forgot because the fights, quarrels, incidents, undercurrents weren't small enough for him. Nobody could help that too, until a breeze blew silently, blew daily and moulded his adolescence into a form that was irrepairable, totally unjustifiable by anybody, who would hear what had happened all through his teenage years. And he is not going to justify it either. Days and nights passed with the small happiness that he got from the silver lining among the dark clouds. Years passed swiftly before him, voluntarily, though he knew that he wouldn't get a second chance to live those years again, he let it pass. He played a game, a game of dice.