Mother, Father Source I come

my mind beats like a restless drum

from You I flow back to You I go

teach me what to forget

and know.

conrad levasseur

Sound of thunder in the distance and in the next room, Kumar Gandharva sings Kaale Meghaa(Dark Clouds) in Raag Mian-ki-Malhaar and I am full of lounging for the country I left behind. Lightning flashes in the distance it's white teeth. Water is cascading down as sheets on the window panes I sit across. I look up and outwards and see water falling through the leaves and branches of the trees outside my window and through the leaves I see the dark sky. I wonder what people whose faces I haven't see in a while, two years and ten days to be precise, might be doing on the other side of the planet, perhaps there it would be a clear morning and sun would be rising in the sky as they sleep on into early morning.

The beat of the tabla comes in, teen tal, beat cycles of three. Rain has abated a little, big fat drops of cool water are dripping from the leaves and on the windows drops are travelling towards one another as if they too were aching to unite and merge into a bigger whole, this feeling beyond the simple physics of surface tension and gravity that only the heart can understand. I watch their tracks on the windows.Now a new track has cut in, Kumarji is singing Jaajyo re badarwa (Swiftly go Cloud). A lady is asking the coulds to convey her lounging to her beloved. Sweet lounging in the raaga, aaah this music is cuting grooves into all the hard shells I had developed to keep any emotion at bay. And so many memories come flooding back to me, of rains and many rainy evenings.

Of riding my bicycle, which was orginally my father's, over muddy paths through the countryside that was once all around my parent's house, of watching rain falling on rice stalks with a ploping sound and thousands of rippiles going out in concentric circles, as if an artist had decided at once instantly to create thousands and thousands of translucent rings, of standing on the porch as the house was dark anyway, one thing the local electricity board always did was cut the power till the storm passed, of jumping up and down in rain puddles with other kids trying to get each other wet, of playing soccer as it rained hail in the field beneath my room at Kgp, this in the middle of summer,of sitting on the Hijli bridge with K as a thunder storm moved all around us screaming like an deranged old witch and then more recent nights, when we walked around the court sqaure at Decatur, you in your red jacket (anytime I see any woman in red I remember you, in red with the most clear eyes almost of a child and the warm smile cutting through the January cold on that train platform, red jacket at the end of Concourse A) shivering wordlessly after refusing to wear my rain jacket, watching you watch your favouraite statue in this city, two old people sitting on a bench, content and implacable in the rain growing older still, Valentine. Or later still that night, I remember waking up next to you, it was still raining and you were so beautiful as you slept. I miss you much maybe because however much I try to board up any roads of the heart that may lead to you, I still love you. I hope it's doesn't stop raining tonight for I don't want to sit alone with only the sound of my heartbeat in this room as I listen to Geet Varsha (Rain of Songs), the name of the tape, folk songs and bhajans from Malwa, that describe the beauty of water, be it rain outside falling through the trees or my tears falling on this desk.

They are demolishing a building here, now the hammer drives through the windows, glass splinters everywhere glisten like morning dew, now it strikes a column and it shudders under the impact. Crowds mill around the yard, few stand with me and look perhaps as mesmerized as I am by falling concrete and twisted steel.

Soon everything would change, everything is changing even as I write: sun is curving behind this tree towards night, the tree's shadow is inching imperceptiably towards evening, clouds that rained throughout yesterday night are moving south to the sea, a guy has just kissed a girl, they are in love, I can see that from here, but soon they may not be anymore, a butterfly which must have transitioned from a puape a few days ago has just flapped its wings twenty times or more over a bed of marigolds,a few marigolds are already turning brown from golden, that house whose walls your voice glued together is falling apart and nothing seems to hold it up. And for no reason at all just as you had come, you have already left, only your memories remain hovering like dragonflies, sunning themselves around me.

They say that they will clear the mounds of mangled steel and shattered glass in a week. And just like that, soon nothing will remain.

2002:08:19 15:00 Atlanta