I have been waiting all day for you. What took you so long? Did someone stop you from coming? Did you find someone sadder who needed your tears more than me? Was it spite you felt towards me?
The dawn held ominous signs for the day; bluish skies, the clouds gray or white instead of black. There wasn’t a hint of moisture within the dirty cotton look of the small clouds. No black, no threat, no chance of an outburst; deluge a far cry. But I hoped.
The sun came out, a little later than was usual, almost a tease but no pretensions about the inferno it had promised the day before when it had gone to bed.
It moved from the east to the median with a game of burning light and shadows that had only enormous trapped heat. Scorched was what the ground looked by mid-morning; by noon, the brown earth looked charred black.
At noon, the leaves on the trees wilted to submission, as if ready to topple the beleaguered tree; dust settled on all surfaces, dust that searched in vain for the impetus of a breeze to disperse. The dust entered the houses through nooks and crannies like a disease that was rotting nature, the top soil displaced without the binding embrace of moisture.
Moisture was all that one saw on the backs of people’s shirts; the trouser leg, the undergarments, the socks, all sinking in a miserable broth of sweat and dust.
As the sun slanted to the west by late afternoon, its rays fell at an angle on the windshields of the cars, the reflected rays blinding the already dim-visioned pedestrian.
The backs of the walking masses also looked bent; the day had taken a heavy toll. The tea-stall looked desolate; no one wanted to taste the elixir anymore.
The man who drove cars for a living was trying to hide from the beaming surface of the vehicle that provided him a livelihood; he was nursing first-degree burns from having touched the metallic surface. The beggar on the street corner was stooped in submission to the heat chamber that his world had become; he didn’t want alms.
He looked at the mercilessly blue clouds smiling at him with splendour but no promise of relief. He wanted to throw his alms bowl at the pedestrian who had extended a coin. Insanity was creeping in through the pores of his uncovered head.
Near the evening, the blue clouds were gradually eaten up by the hitherto small black clouds, making the black formations dominating.
The black blocked the last golden rays of the sun. You were being conceived, drop by drop, but, like a river that breaks the dam, you came.
Later in the evening and till a new dawn, you came in torrents, flooding the streets, taking the dusty film away from all surfaces, replacing the grime with glistening silver.
The metal of the cars sizzled at first but then got cooler and cooler and lost all its metallic anger in your watery embrace; the driver breathed again. The leaves stayed bent, happily though, in response to your refreshing pattering.
Rain, the teardrops of a miserably scorched day of pain, had finally come, and it would remain till the next bout of torture under the sun. I hoped.
