What the rain left behind…

The first thumri that comes to my mind each time it rains is — ab ke sawan ghar aaja. An ode to longing.

I don’t know when I first began to associate rain with longing or with this thumri. But the connection has stayed much longer than I can trace back now.

The sky erupts after a loud thunderous announcement. The clouds weep, and it seems as if they accompany me in my longing.

It rains just before I leave a place I’ve grown to love. A strange phenomenon I’ve always witnessed while travelling. I’ve stopped believing in coincidences, so I shall not call it one. It feels as if nature emulates and externalises the grief and pain in my heart.

When I cannot cry with the sadness of leaving, it seems like nature does it on my behalf.

I think of the lines — “piya ke paas le jaa…” from the thumri, and recall the intense ache in Begum Akhtar’s voice as she sings this line. She repeats it several times, each time returning and swirling deeper into pining for an elusive, absent love.

After many years, this thumri stopped bringing up memories of a particular person. Only the association with the feelings remained. It always reminds me of loss, but it doesn’t take me back to any particular loss. Rain too, reminds me of loss, in an inexplicable and undefinable way.

It pours beautifully outside as I write this. The mountains and the fields are splashed with a fresh and effervescent green.

I hear the dripping from various directions, the presence of water, a comforting companion.

The leaves flutter tenderly when tiny droplets of rain fall on them. It seems like they welcome the rain, just like the heart does.

The heart hardly ever grows weary and irritated at the rain. It’s always the mind that resists the opening of the clouds, the fierce rumbling of thunder or the longing it inevitably brings with it. The heart on the other hand, is ready as ever to erupt with the roars of lightning, and to lay in the lush green, embraced by the soothing sound of downpour.