Rains 1

I walk very carefully after the rains, for I fear the muck on the ground has ingenious ways of entering my sandals. My toes are forever alert to the intrusion. I try not to lower my toes too far towards the dirt. But try as I might, I can never avoid the wet, grainy feeling beneath my toes, as the muck slithers in. I lose this forever-long battle again and again. The rains lash against urban colors and the whores cry in anguish. The material of this world is obstinate and there is the persistent stench of guilt. The rainy muck slithers under my toes, alive.


I want to sit in an old arm chair and stare out at the sky and do nothing for a long long time. I want to think of nothing. Feel nothing. And let there mix under the fading seas my little obsessions of life. It may rain softly, in light surprise, at the foolish complexity of my thoughts. The distant lights occupying the evening may keep complacent vigil over my drunkenness. My old armchair itself will be in melancholy retreat, its legs giving way slowly.


A bright, red Communist Party of India Marxist stage has been set up on a busy road. The cloth material is new. It shines in the sun. The flags flap in the afternoon wind. The stage is empty. It sits there, by the passing crowd, a bawdy, red ornament; completely empty. I don't see in this strange picture, the demise of a political party, or the demise of an ideology. Merely the loss of interest in Politics itself. It hasn't rained yet. It is hot. 


It usually rains in the evenings. The rain lashes against a stagnant urban reality. The wet streets reflect the lights. Raindrops balance on the narrow ledges of the old buses. They walk the tightrope to the end and then dance downwards. Storm pulls at middle class umbrellas. It pulls at the saris women wear. Old buildings seem tired of the rains. Their walls have seen it for years, the incessant downpour, the empty promise of life. The eye catches the detail, of raindrops on distant leaves, shining in the ambivalent evenings. Sometimes it feels like the rains wash the pain away. But its an illusive feeling. The pain is a recurrent theme. It is a ubiquitous painting, water colors on a thin canvas. The rains do not wash away, but paint deeper. This canvas surrounds me wherever I go. The water colors turn inside out in the rains, different combinations of the same picture. 


I possess only fragments of my self. I remember bits of an inconsequential past. The past throws up guilt like vomit.