As the country eagerly anticipates the rains to dissipate the heat, let Spark’s June issue help hasten the process! Themed ‘Rains’, this issue’s poetry, fiction and non-fiction will prep you to enjoy the downpours when they finally arrive.
A man’s slippers are washed away during a heavy spell of rains. Anupama Krishnakumar’s story captures his thoughts about his lost footwear.
Bakul Banerjee’s poem is inspired by the renowned Sanskrit poet Kalidasa’s “Meghadutam”. “Meghadutam” or the Cloud Messenger is one of his short works which describes the story of a Yaksha, a heavenly creature, trying to send a message to his faraway beloved using a cloud as the messenger.
In Inna Dulchevsky’s poem, rain transforms into many images and becomes a multi-dimensional metaphor for one’s own soul.
For Indian farmers, the monsoons are everything. Mohankumar’s poem tells the story of a farmer who waits hopefully for the rains to arrive and turn his fortune around.
The first monsoon shower is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated natural event of the year. It brings with it joy, excitement, the soaring of spirits and the plummeting of temperatures. It is just the right occasion for some familial love and bonding, as this flash fiction by Shruthi Rao demonstrates.
With rain as the backdrop, Parminder Singh’s poem brings forth the course of a life which, in contrast with what was dreamt, goes kaput. There is a tinge of egoism which lets relationships flow away in the rain. The bloom withers away with time and the moments that could have been painted with the rainbows of togetherness pave way to an imminent loneliness.
ARTOHUS’s article offers a kaleidoscopic view of the multifarious emotions that monsoons make us feel and our favourite Bollywood songs that help us express them.
Sunaina Jain’s poem traverses the feelings of the speaker as she throws away the vestiges of propriety and hypocritical social norms by discarding a failed marital relationship. The rain has been used as a motif to wash away the negativity of her married life and embrace life-affirming beauty surrounding her, helping restore her lost self.