by Bakul Banerjee
The monsoon always came with a vengeance.
I, at sixteen, paused in reverence, for days
and nights, then nights and days, many days.
Clouds made up the leaky roof of the world.
The rain flooded the fresh food market.
Mothers cooked with whatever they had
on hand. Fathers lamented the lack of fish.
The sweltering summer heat was forgotten.
If I, a restless teen, could, I would stay in
and write bad love poems hiding them
under the Mechanics textbook. Girls like me
yearned for their own Yakshas, the lovers.
Born in an undefined celestial realm, they
may have lived next door or in the next town.
But I knew better. My Yaksha wouldn’t
know anything about the Cloud Messenger.
My Yaksha did not care about the words
of Kalidasa, the poet for lovers through ages.
He wouldn’t know how to instruct the ominous
cloud with thunders in its belly, how to find me.
Soon, wrapping an old sari tight around me,
I stepped out with the black umbrella, parting
the curtain of beaded raindrops. With the farm
women swaying in rice fields, I waded through
water flowing around my humble sandals.
The warm rain swished away dirt making
my feet pretty. With just one look at them,
the Cloud Messenger would know his destination,
but my Yaksha never gave him any message.
Picture from https://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/
