Rain midwater

The first time I realized the magnificence of rain was many years ago when I took a boat with family to visit my father’s island village. This tiny land mass is separated from mainland by the backwaters and the only way to reach it is to take a small motorized boat which ferries people back and forth across the grey water. The boat is to be caught from a small makeshift jetty at the tip of the mainland, tucked away among the houses which line the coast. To reach it, we walk through dingy streets spreading from the highway and punctuated with communal water pipes where people gather with their colourful plastic pots and buckets to collect water and share news. At the end of these streets lies the jetty where those headed to the island await the boat. It appears suddenly at a distance, and then seems to slow down; lazily humming as it approaches. The men walk back and forth on the rickety wooden platform which is the jetty. It is held up areca nut poles plunged into the muddy banks. The children amuse themselves on the mounds of clam shells and cuttle fish bones which lie around the waiting shed. There is an old quicklime factory nearby which uses up all the shells and leaves a dry smokiness in the air. It mingles with smells of the wet wooden planks and the water weeds which wash up on the banks. The green stick like seeds of the surrounding mangroves can be seen floating around in the water, perfectly straight, on their way to suitable place to grow roots into.

I walked to the edge of the water, picking shells and throwing them around. Dad watches me from a distance for a while, and then joins me, pointing out the tiny shelled creatures sticking to the stones lining the banks on either side of the jetty; barnacles, he calls them. They even grow on whales. We talk about whales and how nice it would be if someone would scrape their unsightly backs, which are crusted with barnacles as we had often seen on TV, when the boat arrives. One of the men who run the service jumps out first, drawing the boat to the jetty with ropes and securing it to a pole. Impatient men jump out, followed by women who are helped off by them. The man who emerged first collects the fare from the people waiting to board as the small boat empties. Then we all hop in; the women sit on the wooden planks built across the breadth of the boat and the men balance themselves on the edges; carefully distributing them selves on the either side to prevent the boat from capsizing from uneven weight.

The driver fires up the small motor and we’re on our way, the sun falling strongly on us, blurring our vision. There is vibrant chatter on board; politics and elopements fill the air above the boat. We’re almost in the middle of the water when the sky suddenly clouds over and cool wind blows in from the sea beyond the back waters. The chatter falls silent and the boat rocks from side to side as the mood of the water changes. I look where the water curves and disappears behind the mainland. The scenery of palm trees blurs, as if covered by a sheet. My dad points and tells me “look, that’s the rain coming” I am unable to comprehend what he means but continue looking. Then there it was, the rain racing across the water from the see to meet us. We could see the water surface rippling with raindrops a little distance away from us. Then the rain engulfed our boat, stranded mid water. Umbrellas go up, useless against the strong shower which drenches from all sides. The boat started moving slowly again, all conversation was washed away by the rain and we were caught in a strange world; water below and water above. All I could see was the vision of the rain furiously progressing inland from the sea a few moments before, drowning everything in its wake, changing the landscape in a split second display.