A sheet of blank paper stares at me like it has never seen me before. I stare back at it and try to convince it that we were once friends: kindred souls who had once bonded to fill up the emptiness in their lives… I receive no answer. There is no welcoming smile back, no acceptance. There is no recollection in its mind of the countless nights that we had spent together, filling pages of pages with my troubled thoughts, my anger, my exhilaration, my joy. I flip over the pages filled with my handwriting, go over the same lines and try to restore my sense of belonging…this is my notebook, these are my thoughts, my pages, my creation.
I fail. They seem alien to me as I seem alien to them. It’s as if it’s not the same person, I am not the same person anymore. These are not my words, these are someone else’ thoughts. I try to write something, anything… My name. I roll over the letters, try to think of something. The sheet of paper stares back at me as if I have committed a blasphemy by soiling its puritan existence. Tears fill my eyes, tears of frustration, helplessness, and desperation.
And then I look out of the window. Cocooned in my safe air conditioned room I had somehow failed to realize that the AC was running uselessly, outside temperatures have dropped. The gleaming mid day sun had long since set and it was dusk. And there were clouds. Not tiny fluffy ones but big grey ones. And they had this red glow lining them. Was that the sun behind? I knew I had to get out. Pushing ajar the door of my verandah, I stepped out into the light.
It had not yet started to rain, but there was this mingled muddy smell that always accompanies first rain, and a pleasant breeze was blowing. I rest my chin on my hands and bend over, trying to see the ground many floors below. The tea vendor opposite closing down the shutters of his stall. A postman cycling hastily away. A storm was brewing.
As if instantaneously, the wind caught on speed. The red glow behind the clouds was hidden completely, making it very dark. I raised my face in anticipation of the first touch of rain. Pit pat. Pit pat. A few large drops fell in the darkness. It seemed only moments before the rain caught on speed, a downpour fit for the year’s first thunderstorm. Whistling through the treetops it was soon a white sheet, moving this direction and that. I was drenched, but I moved further out to capture the rain on every inch of my body.
Perhaps the pleasures of dancing in the rain are not unknown to most. Even as a child, that one experience marked a sense of freedom from homework, from the fears of scolding from Mom, and from the small little problems that bothered me at that stage. It was, and has always been a release, and this was no exception. There’s something wild in the way the rain lashes against your face, the way the wind tries to overcome your body. There’s this fierce exhilaration when the storm takes possession of your spirit, and you dance as if one with the rain. I felt completely overpowered and helpless, yet jubilant at the same time.
The storm was dying down. The rain, still blowing about, was lighter. I could see the cloud shapes again. Not wishing to catch a cold and risk a scolding (yes that still happens), I turned back. The room seemed colder than when I left it, or was it because I was drenched? Shivering, and on the way to my cupboard to grab something dry, my glance fell on the sheet of paper lying on my desk. Something beckoned.
I admit I was scared. Dead scared of being rejected and humiliated again. But this time my name on that blank sheet was almost welcoming. Still shivering, in cold, in fear, or in anticipation I will never know, I took up my pen. Surprisingly, it was warm. As my fingers wrapped around it, some random lines came into my head. It was something about the storm, and the joy of dancing in the rain. I jotted down the shaky lines. They weren’t great, but they had some rhyme in them. It was beginning to look like a poem. The sheet of paper wasn’t blank anymore. I was writing once again.
