While Watching the Rain...

From the shelter of my home I allow myself the luxury of watching the dark rain-bearers charge across the skies, hurling their exquisite bounties at the earth. I watch, as their invisible ally, the wind, shakes the trees and I listen to its insistent jubilation whistling through a small gap in one of my windows.

Two ladies pass below my window, their shared umbrella pummelled within an inch of destruction by the relentless gale and their dresses soaked by the drops carried on it. Their feet make small splashes in the watery film that flows over the stone tiles of the building compound...the ground is alive with the ceaseless impact a million raindrops, each of which hurtles joyously towards the earth knowing that in a fraction of a moment, it will lose its form forever...

Glancing at a nearby building, I spy an orderly line of pigeons, huddling under the roof's ornamental protrusion (and smile contentedly, knowing that their endless defecation will not soil my balconies for several days to come!). On a hunch I leave my window to examine our apartment's terrace...intuition serves me well, as I find a prized Lily plant overturned by the careless gusts that swirl all around our apartment complex. The clusters of potted plants and ornamental rocks on my terrace glisten with the regular cleansing they receive minute upon minute... a short while later, I re-enter the house, my clothes considerably dampened by the brief act of bringing the plant into a sheltered corner.

It is late afternoon but the dense cloud-canopy does keeps the sun out of sight; it grows dark outside and the distant roll of thunder takes the form of a lullaby. The house grows cooler and the body wants nothing more than to give itself over to the conspiratorial coaxing of the monsoons...Who am I to challenge the strength of a Season? Before I known it, the cosy folds of my quilt are up to my chin and my eyes grow heavy under nature's enchantment...a welcome, comforting darkness comes before me...and my spirit wanders...